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President Donald Trump began year 2018 with his very first tweet insulting and threatening Pakistan. Is this a continuing manifestation of what American foreign policy experts John Hulsman and Wes Mitchell call "The Godfather Doctrine"? Is Trump prepared to reject the US-created post World War II international institutional framework? Is he ready to abandon diplomatic route and act unilaterally against a whole range of nations, including Pakistan, refusing to kowtow? Does he think threats and intimidation will work with other nations? Is Trump willing to make a transactional arrangement with Pakistan? Let's examine possible answers to these questions.
Post World War II International Order:
After winning the second world war, the United States led the creation of a new rules-based architecture that heavily favored the United States above all other nations. International institutions such as the United Nations (UN) and its various agencies, International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, World Trade Organization (WTO) and others to exercise power.
President Trump and his friends like Steve Bannon appear to be rejecting the value of this international framework created and sustained by his predecessors. Their preference is for transactional rather than strategic relationships with long-time US allies such as the Western Europeans and the Pakistanis.
Trump's Bilateral/Transactional Model:
Trump, a real estate developer, sees other nations like he saw his business partners, financiers and customers. Each deal is a transaction that must stand on its own. There's no such thing as "long term" or "strategic". Trump is willing to use intimidation and threats to try to get his way just as the Godfather movie character "Vito Corleone" tried. But he is rejecting renewing and using US-built international framework to deal with issues diplomatically.
Parallels with Vito Corleone:
As a superpower in relative decline like the Godfather in the movie, the United States faces a situation similar to the one Vito Corleone's sons Michael and Sonny and adopted son Tom Hagen, the consiglieri, faced right after the unexpected attack on the feared but aging Vito Corleone at the peak of his power that he built by an institutional framework that rewarded policemen, politicians, judges and competing crime bosses in New York City.
The elaborate international alliances and institutions that US has built over 60 years ago, such as UN Security Council, NATO, World Bank, OECD, WTO, IMF, IAEA etc, through which America exercises tremendous power and control, are being weakened by Donald Trump, and my guess is that these alliances and institutions will not survive as they are today. There will be a major realignment of nations, as the powerful new players, particularly China and Russia and other emerging powers such as India and Pakistan, demand greater say in world affairs.
US-Pakistan Transactional Relationship:
How can US and Pakistan negotiate an end to the current impasse if the Trump administration decides to cut whatever little aid Pakistan receives from the United States? Pakistan could demand significant fees for the use of Pakistani territory by the United States to supply its troops. If the US refuses, Pakistan could simply cut off the NATO supply route as it did back in 2011 after the Salala incident.
Summary:
Trump appears to be opting for the "Godfather Doctrine" to make offers that he mistakenly believes no one can refuse. He rejects the the renewal or use of the US-sponsored international institutional framework. Given the transactional nature of the relationships the Trump administration seeks, what would a transaction look like between President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi? It could be in the form of Pakistan continuing to allow the use of its airspace and land routes to supply US troops in Afghanistan for substantial fees that could add up to more than the US aid to Pakistan today. If the US balks at it, Pakistan could simply cut off US supply routes as it did back in 2011 after the Salala incident.
In clear defiance of the US campaign to isolate Iran, Pakistan this week formally signed an agreement for the construction of a 560-mile, $7.5 billion gas pipeline from Iran's South Pars gas field in the Gulf through Pakistan's Balochistan province to Sindh province. The agreement with Iran came within days of America's announcement of plans to push stricter sanctions against Iran, and just days before the start of the planned US-Pakistan strategic dialog in Washington.
"By connecting itself with the world's second largest gas reserves, Pakistan would guarantee reliable supply for decades to come," U.S. energy analyst Gal Luft told UPI.
Pakistan is not alone in snubbing the world's sole superpower. Just last week, the Israelis did the same when they announced plans to build 1600 new units in occupied East Jerusalem during Vice President Joseph Biden's visit there. Subsequent denunciations of Israeli actions by the Quartet (UN, Europe, Russia and US) and angry rhetoric in Washington has only served to strengthen the Jewish state's resolve to go ahead with the settlement construction on Palestinian land.
Turkey, Brazil and China have in the past month each delivered timely snubs of Washington's push for sanctions against the Iranian regime, according to a story in the Wall Street Journal. Russia joined the list of snubbers when it surprised the U.S. delegation this week by announcing that it plans to help Iran launch its first nuclear reactor by July just as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrapped up her Moscow visit.
Strangely enough, a country like India which prides itself on its independence in setting foreign policy, is out of tune with the rest of the world in its decision to pull out of the Iran-Pakistan-India gap pipeline project under intense US pressure. It seems India is quite satisfied with the access to US nuclear technology in exchange for obeying Washington on Iran.
The US has so far rejected any civilian nuclear deal with Pakistan. But there are some US analysts, like Christine Fair, who see the benefits of such a deal. Here is how Fair put it in a recent Wall Street Journal op ed:
"Pakistan terrifies the United States because it is a unique nexus of nuclear proliferation and Islamist militancy. But with success in Afghanistan elusive, Washington needs Islamabad more than ever, and vice versa. The two countries have never been able to achieve a durable relationship based on mutual trust. That could be fixed, however, if the U.S. were willing to consider a radical new approach: a policy centered on a conditions-based civilian nuclear deal.
Nuclear cooperation could deliver results where billions of dollars of American aid have failed. Pakistan has long benefited from Washington's largess—including more than $15 billion in aid and lucrative reimbursements since 9/11—while only marginally delivering on U.S. expectations. Islamabad has refused to work against the Afghan Taliban and homegrown terror groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba, or provide Washington access to A.Q. Khan to verify that his nuclear black markets have been dismantled."
Fair argues in her Op Ed that "In the long shadow of A.Q. Khan and continued uncertainty about the status of his networks, it is easy to forget that Pakistan has established a Strategic Plans Division that has done much to improve safety of the country's nuclear assets."
The United States no longer enjoys the kind of unchallenged superpower status it did immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In spite of the fact that the US economy is still the world's largest accounting for 27% of global GDP, and its military is the most powerful with the ability to project American power around the globe, there are increasing challenges to its authority by many nations. In fact, the current US situation is best explained by its parallels to that faced by the Vito Corleone character in the classic movie "The Godfather", as described by "The Godfather Doctrine", a foreign policy parable by John Hulsman and Wes Mitchell. It appears that the US has lost its perceived power to make offers that no one can refuse.
It seems that the elaborate framework of international institutions that US helped architect and build after WW II, such as UN Security Council, NATO, World Bank, OECD, WTO, IMF, and IAEA, through which America exercises tremendous power and control, are being weakened partly due to America's own missteps, and my guess is that these alliances and institutions will not survive beyond the next few decades. There will be a huge realignment of nations, as the powerful new players, including China, Russia, Germany, Japan, Brazil, India, South Africa will demand greater say in the affairs of the world. So will the Iranians, the Koreans, the Turks, the Pakistanis and the Arabs. With their growing economic power, the Chinese are already starting to take steps to replace the US dollar with the Chinese yuan as a major reserve and trade currency in the world.
The US-India nuclear deal, and India's decision to abandon the IPI gas pipeline, and the growing India-US ties appear to be part of a larger realignment in Asia and the world. There is an effort by the US to "co-opt" India as a close ally in the emerging new world order.
"The Godfather Doctrine", a foreign policy parable by John Hulsman and Wes Mitchell, uses the Godfather movie metaphor to describe the current situation the United States is confronted with. As a superpower in relative decline like the Godfather in the movie, Uncle Sam faces a situation similar to the one Vito Corleone's sons Michael and Sonny and adopted son Tom Hagen, the consiglieri, faced right after the unexpected attack on the feared but aging Vito Corleone at the peak of his power. It compares the fruit stand attack on Vito by upstarts (Sollozzo) to the 911 attacks by Al Qaeda on the United States.
The metaphor in the book classifies Tom as a "liberal institutionalist" who wants to use the elaborate institutional network Vito Corleone created by making alliances with other crime families and buying out policemen, judges and politicians. This is the system that Tom, in his role as consiglieri, was responsible for maintaining. By sharing access to the policemen, judges and senators that (as Sollozzo puts it) the don “carries in his pocket like so many nickels and dimes,” the family managed to create a kind of Sicilian Bretton Woods—a system of political and economic public goods that benefited not only the Corleones, but the entire mafia community who joined hands with the Corleones.
Sonny's visceral response to the crisis is to advocate “toughness” through military action, a single-minded policy prescription for waging righteous war against the rest of the ungrateful mafia world. Dismissing Tom’s pleas that business will suffer, Sonny’s damn-the-torpedoes approach belies a deep-seated fear that the only way to reestablish the family’s dominance is preemptive action to eradicate all possible future threats to it. While such a strategy makes emotional sense following the attempted hit on his father, it runs counter to the long-term interests of the family. So Sonny represents "the necon" who goes on a rampage, much like the Bush administration did after 911, in response to the attack on his father and fails miserably and gets killed. By starting a gangland free-for-all in the wake of the hit on his father, Sonny unwittingly severs long-standing family alliances and unites much of the rest of the mafia world against the Corleones. The resulting war is one of choice rather than strategic necessity. Sonny’s rash instinct to use military power to solve his structural problems merely hastens the family’s decline.
Michael is the "realist" (Obama?) who survives to use a combination of hard power and soft power to maintain and enrich his crime family by co-opting other emerging crime families, which the book compares with the US attempts to co-opt the BRIC countries, representing Brazil, Russia, India and China among others. It is the strategy that ultimately saves the Corleone family from the Sollozzo threat and equips it for coping with multipolarity. Unlike Tom, whose labors as family lawyer have produced an exaggerated devotion to negotiation, and Sonny, whose position as untested heir apparent has produced a zeal for utilizing the family arsenal, Michael has no formulaic fixation on a particular policy instrument. Instead, his overriding goal is to protect the family’s interests and save it from impending ruin by any and all means necessary. In today’s foreign-policy terminology, Michael is a realist.
While addressing the family’s immediate need for a more versatile policy tool kit and shoring up its teetering alliances, Michael also takes steps to adjust the institutional playing field to the Corleones’ advantage on a more fundamental, long-term basis. Where Tom sees institutions as essentially static edifices that act as sources of power in their own right and Sonny sees them as needless hindrances to be bypassed, Michael sees institutions for what they truly are: conduits of influence that “reflect and ratify” but do not supplant deeper power realities. When the distribution of power shifts, institutions are sure to follow. As the Tataglias and Barzinis gain strength, Michael knows they will eventually overturn the existing order and replace it with an institutional rule book that better reflects their own needs and interests. Evidence that this process is already underway can be seen in the ease with which Sollozzo is able to enlist the support of a local precinct captain—the mafia equivalent of a UN mandate—when police loyalties formerly belonged to the Corleones. Similarly, Washington increasingly finds the very institutions it created after World War II being used against it by today’s rising powers, even as new structures are being built (like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization) that exclude the United States as a participant altogether.
Authors Hulsman and Mitchell compare Iran and North Korea, who defy US and the US-backed institutions such as the UN Security Council consistently, with Sollozzo, who challenges Vito Corleone. And the US doesn't quite know how to deal with them. Sollozzo realizes that fundamental changes are underway in the global system and knows that they give him greater latitude for defying the Corleones than he had in the past. As Sollozzo tells Tom, “The old man is slipping; ten years ago I couldn’t have gotten to him.”
I think the elaborate international alliances and institutions that US has built over 60 years ago, such as UN Security Council, NATO, World Bank, OECD, WTO, IMF, IAEA etc, through which America exercises tremendous power and control, are being weakened partly due to America's own missteps, and my guess is that these alliances and institutions will not survive as they are today. There will be a huge realignment of nations, as the powerful new players, including China, Russia, Germany, Japan, Brazil, India, South Africa want greater say in the affairs of the world. So do the Iranians, the Koreans and the Arabs.
So the only way the US can retain significant power and influence is by co-opting some of these emerging nations. The ones that seems ready to play ball are India and established economic powers like Germany and Japan, who have economically benefited from globalization under the US leadership. Others, such as Russia, China and Brazil, who have also benefited from globalization, are not willing to be co-opted by the US.
In my opinion, India appears to be well on its way to join the US as a close ally in this emerging new multipolar world. There is a burgeoning US-India relationship in almost all spheres. Indian Prime Minister Mr. Manmohan Singh summed it up well when he said to former President Bush on his visit to the White House last year, "The people of India deeply love you."
The Prime Minister continued with the theme of affection and gratitude by adding, “In the last four and half years that I have been Prime Minister, I have been the recipient of your generosity, your affection, your friendship. It means a lot to me and to the people of India.”
Later, India's Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon explained: “I think, if you look at the public opinion polls, the ratings for President Bush are higher in India than in any other country. That is the factual basis.”
As the US-China rivalry grows and US and India continue to build ever closer ties, it is very likely that Pakistan will be forced to make a choice and grow away from the US and closer to China in the years ahead. This decision will be driven partly by the powerful anti-US currents in Pakistan's public opinion.
The book "The Godfather Doctrine" paints the United States as a power in relative decline, and it forecasts the emergence of a new, multi-polar world, with US being one of many power centers. In all likelihood, America will still be quite strong and powerful for a while, but its writ will no longer be unchallenged. It will have to rely on support from other powers to deal with the Solozzos (Iran, North Korea, al Qaeda etc.) of the world.
As you can see, the drama in real life is not quite over yet. Let's see if the metaphor makes sense as it plays itself out.
