(Context: I want to complain about some smaller claims in this piece that I think are wrong, not the big claim that Trump is self-interested more than he is racist, which seems right.)
I'm not sure how much I buy the idea that stereotyping is an inefficient approach to international politics. It's about assuming broad truths for a given group, and foreign policy is about dealing with groups. The example of Mike Pence detesting Iran "Because they are evil" is just sort of... right? (Looking past the strange, extreme religious inflection I'm sure he meant to give it.) They're saying 'Death to America'. They're funding lots of terror. They're repressing their own people brutally. Those all seem like good reasons to treat Iran as 'evil', and then support a hawkish stance.
You redefine 'stereotype' very narrowly to only include irrational beliefs about groups. But I don't think that maps very well to the actual Republican style or to what the word means, which is probably closer to "(over)simplified beliefs about groups." And I think those stereotypes are often useful in the international arena.
For example, it's actually pretty rational for us to be more resistant to Iranian claims that seek to ease sanctions against themselves; that's just proper Bayesianism. You interpret that resistance unfavorably as a simple stereotypical belief in Iranian duplicitousness (and maybe some low-decoupling / demagogue-ish conservative pundits express it in a particularly extreme way), but the underlying rationality is sound. The stereotype approximates the incentive landscape well.
I think "we should stereotype with somewhat less irrationality" is a good lesson to draw from Iraq-type debacles, but we also shouldn't swing too far back to an assumption that other actors are just like us. Xi's incentives and his own biases are, in many important ways, fundamentally opposed to ours, same for Khamenei and Putin and Kim Jong-Un.
I hardly think I "redefine" stereotyping here. Insofar as it's defined in IR theory (admittedly there's not much of a literature besides the one article that inspired me to write this), it's when a policymaker tends to explain behavior according to disposition and they don't sufficiently update their beliefs according to evidence. I can't say how it's defined in psychology, but those two features also seem to be the popular connotations of the term. What you call "stereotyping" above I think would better be described as simply having heuristics to understand the character of others, which is much too broad a definition.
I accept that I may be oversimplifying the Republican worldview (upon re-reading I realize that in the Cold War paragraph I'm conflating commentators with policymakers, and the points about Nixon and Reagan really suggests that GOP policymakers were more flexible on the Soviets than I give them credit for), but I stand by the characterization of the GOP view on China and Iran, and I think it's very clear that the stereotypes of both are flatly wrong. There's no evidence China wants to remake the world order; if they did they wouldn't participate in so many US-led institutions and uphold post-1945 norms. And Iran is pretty clearly a rational actor that's not hell-bent on nukes and can be negotiated with. As for "evil," that's really an unsophisticated way to look at the world. Plenty of regimes are evil and it's much better that we deal with them through carrots than sticks (there's some theory behind this, too: https://direct.mit.edu/isec/article-abstract/35/1/138/11993/Getting-What-You-Want-Positive-Inducements-in).
Point taken on the broadness of my "stereotyping," but I think you're too far in the other direction when you restrict it only to irrational behavior. Then why don't you just criticize irrational foreign relations in general? And those come in fairly equal parts giving enemies too much and too little credit. (Look at recent Republican commentator discourse over Putin—particularly the "he's just acting rationally in response to NATO; no need to worry, Poland" crowd.)
On dealing with evil: it seems like "carrot" diplomacy in that paper means more or less, "if you do what we say, we'll stop beating you with this huge stick and start beating you with a slightly smaller stick instead." Which is weird, but fine, if that's how we want to deal with evil regimes, then we actually do need to start out beating them with a pretty big stick! Maybe the overzealous Republican outlook is part of a healthy American IR ecosystem then: we can count on them to advocate using really massive sticks, and then cooler heads can offer smaller sticks later (analogous to the Cold War commentator / policymaker divide).
The other part of this I think you're neglecting: evil regimes treat their own people really badly (China & Iran!), and we have an extra obligation to act hawkish toward them even if it's not very good for changing their outward posturing. The impact of carrots on dictators' internal policy is way more doubtful, so, hell: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/08/30/military-strikes-are-an-extremely-cheap-way-to-help-foreigners/.
The reason for focusing on stereotyping rather than irrationality is that it identifies a specific mechanism by which foreign policy can be irrational. Saying irrationality is the problem is a bit like saying unhealthiness is the problem with people’s health. Sure, but there’s something logically prior that’s more interesting and worthwhile to think about!
I also find it absurd to look at US foreign policy discourse and say the problem goes both ways. We have good reasons to think views of other states should skew negative, since we know people tend to see their own behavior positively and attribute it to context, while they’re less charitable with others and attribute their behavior to disposition. On the example re: Russia, I don’t see how that statement is irrational. Even if it’s not true (there’s a fair amount of evidence for it), it’s not a crazy thing to believe. Certainly not as crazy as “the JCPOA helps Iran get nukes” which was/is a GOP talking point.
Finally, it’s really amazing how poorly that Scott essay aged, considering how Libya turned out. It would be hard to identify many experts today who think the US did or could have done much good there without spending a lot more resources on nation building, and even then who knows how it would have turned out. It seems like you have three options here: punish a regime (eg, with sanctions) without toppling it, which makes people more miserable and usually just strengthens repressive forces; topple a regime on the cheap a la Libya, which leads to anarchy; or topple a regime and occupy for a long time, which costs a lot of resources and may improve long-run welfare (eg, post WWII occupations) or not (Afghanistan). There may be some cases where intervention improves the domestic situation, but we should expect those to be incredibly rare.
Well, the health metaphor extends pretty well I think. Given the total clusterfuck of nutrition science, "unhealthiness is the problem with people's health" might be as close as we can get. "Discrimination is the problem with foreign policy" is like saying "fat consumption is the problem with people's health"—yeah, sometimes, but that's way too reductive to actually be very useful. It'd've worked great if we identified that un-agonist-ed GLP-1 receptors were the problem, but we were never gonna do that. Instead, the most helpful health guidance is generally something along the lines of: "try to develop healthy habits." Sure, circular, whatever, but people get the idea and it works better than anything else. "Try to be more rational" I think can be similarly valuable.
There's definitely a fair amount of evidence for "the JCPOA helps Iran fund terror / destabilize the region / solidify its repressive rule." And I don't think it's fair to say there's no evidence of it also still allowing them to move in the direction of nukes—my understanding is that they were definitely building up the capacity to enrich uranium beyond JCPOA restrictions, even though they mimed compliance by not actually enriching to those levels. And, frankly, Israel has the most to lose from Iran going nuclear—the fact that they've been against the JCPOA since the Obama days is telling. (Unless that's discrimination too? Netanyahu isn't a good guy, but I think he's smarter than that. Maybe it was an egotistical, self-interested thing like the Hamas-cash-funneling—but then what do we say about Naftali Bennett's opposition?)
Even with all the poor aging of Scott's specific case, I don't think long-run welfare is actually extremely expensive to buy. A Libya-sized Marshall plan would've cost maybe $9 billion. (Marshall Plan in modern-ish dollars * Libya Pop / 1950 West Europe Pop = $175B * 7M/140M = ~$9B.) So make the $65/QALY estimate into $650, round it to $1000 for the sake of Afghanistan-y uncertainty, and that's still at the better end of "the amazing cost-effectiveness of preventative health care."
Both Democrat and Republican orthodoxy wants America to dominate the globe. Both parties see Taiwan as a lynchpin for this; one sees Israel as wholly necessary. China wants Taiwan in its sphere of influence and Iran wants to neutralize Israel, so conflict is likely to arise in some form so long as the situation remains unchanged.
Any direct kinetic action against Iran is likely unnecessary from Trump after Israel blew up most of the Hezbollah rocket stock. What's left for him to do?
On The Bigger Dick Foreign Policy Theory https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/494362
That's a throwback. I think this was the first paper my nukes professor ever assigned.
nukes professor
(Context: I want to complain about some smaller claims in this piece that I think are wrong, not the big claim that Trump is self-interested more than he is racist, which seems right.)
I'm not sure how much I buy the idea that stereotyping is an inefficient approach to international politics. It's about assuming broad truths for a given group, and foreign policy is about dealing with groups. The example of Mike Pence detesting Iran "Because they are evil" is just sort of... right? (Looking past the strange, extreme religious inflection I'm sure he meant to give it.) They're saying 'Death to America'. They're funding lots of terror. They're repressing their own people brutally. Those all seem like good reasons to treat Iran as 'evil', and then support a hawkish stance.
You redefine 'stereotype' very narrowly to only include irrational beliefs about groups. But I don't think that maps very well to the actual Republican style or to what the word means, which is probably closer to "(over)simplified beliefs about groups." And I think those stereotypes are often useful in the international arena.
For example, it's actually pretty rational for us to be more resistant to Iranian claims that seek to ease sanctions against themselves; that's just proper Bayesianism. You interpret that resistance unfavorably as a simple stereotypical belief in Iranian duplicitousness (and maybe some low-decoupling / demagogue-ish conservative pundits express it in a particularly extreme way), but the underlying rationality is sound. The stereotype approximates the incentive landscape well.
I think "we should stereotype with somewhat less irrationality" is a good lesson to draw from Iraq-type debacles, but we also shouldn't swing too far back to an assumption that other actors are just like us. Xi's incentives and his own biases are, in many important ways, fundamentally opposed to ours, same for Khamenei and Putin and Kim Jong-Un.
Thanks for the feedback.
I hardly think I "redefine" stereotyping here. Insofar as it's defined in IR theory (admittedly there's not much of a literature besides the one article that inspired me to write this), it's when a policymaker tends to explain behavior according to disposition and they don't sufficiently update their beliefs according to evidence. I can't say how it's defined in psychology, but those two features also seem to be the popular connotations of the term. What you call "stereotyping" above I think would better be described as simply having heuristics to understand the character of others, which is much too broad a definition.
I accept that I may be oversimplifying the Republican worldview (upon re-reading I realize that in the Cold War paragraph I'm conflating commentators with policymakers, and the points about Nixon and Reagan really suggests that GOP policymakers were more flexible on the Soviets than I give them credit for), but I stand by the characterization of the GOP view on China and Iran, and I think it's very clear that the stereotypes of both are flatly wrong. There's no evidence China wants to remake the world order; if they did they wouldn't participate in so many US-led institutions and uphold post-1945 norms. And Iran is pretty clearly a rational actor that's not hell-bent on nukes and can be negotiated with. As for "evil," that's really an unsophisticated way to look at the world. Plenty of regimes are evil and it's much better that we deal with them through carrots than sticks (there's some theory behind this, too: https://direct.mit.edu/isec/article-abstract/35/1/138/11993/Getting-What-You-Want-Positive-Inducements-in).
Point taken on the broadness of my "stereotyping," but I think you're too far in the other direction when you restrict it only to irrational behavior. Then why don't you just criticize irrational foreign relations in general? And those come in fairly equal parts giving enemies too much and too little credit. (Look at recent Republican commentator discourse over Putin—particularly the "he's just acting rationally in response to NATO; no need to worry, Poland" crowd.)
On dealing with evil: it seems like "carrot" diplomacy in that paper means more or less, "if you do what we say, we'll stop beating you with this huge stick and start beating you with a slightly smaller stick instead." Which is weird, but fine, if that's how we want to deal with evil regimes, then we actually do need to start out beating them with a pretty big stick! Maybe the overzealous Republican outlook is part of a healthy American IR ecosystem then: we can count on them to advocate using really massive sticks, and then cooler heads can offer smaller sticks later (analogous to the Cold War commentator / policymaker divide).
The other part of this I think you're neglecting: evil regimes treat their own people really badly (China & Iran!), and we have an extra obligation to act hawkish toward them even if it's not very good for changing their outward posturing. The impact of carrots on dictators' internal policy is way more doubtful, so, hell: https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/08/30/military-strikes-are-an-extremely-cheap-way-to-help-foreigners/.
The reason for focusing on stereotyping rather than irrationality is that it identifies a specific mechanism by which foreign policy can be irrational. Saying irrationality is the problem is a bit like saying unhealthiness is the problem with people’s health. Sure, but there’s something logically prior that’s more interesting and worthwhile to think about!
I also find it absurd to look at US foreign policy discourse and say the problem goes both ways. We have good reasons to think views of other states should skew negative, since we know people tend to see their own behavior positively and attribute it to context, while they’re less charitable with others and attribute their behavior to disposition. On the example re: Russia, I don’t see how that statement is irrational. Even if it’s not true (there’s a fair amount of evidence for it), it’s not a crazy thing to believe. Certainly not as crazy as “the JCPOA helps Iran get nukes” which was/is a GOP talking point.
Finally, it’s really amazing how poorly that Scott essay aged, considering how Libya turned out. It would be hard to identify many experts today who think the US did or could have done much good there without spending a lot more resources on nation building, and even then who knows how it would have turned out. It seems like you have three options here: punish a regime (eg, with sanctions) without toppling it, which makes people more miserable and usually just strengthens repressive forces; topple a regime on the cheap a la Libya, which leads to anarchy; or topple a regime and occupy for a long time, which costs a lot of resources and may improve long-run welfare (eg, post WWII occupations) or not (Afghanistan). There may be some cases where intervention improves the domestic situation, but we should expect those to be incredibly rare.
Well, the health metaphor extends pretty well I think. Given the total clusterfuck of nutrition science, "unhealthiness is the problem with people's health" might be as close as we can get. "Discrimination is the problem with foreign policy" is like saying "fat consumption is the problem with people's health"—yeah, sometimes, but that's way too reductive to actually be very useful. It'd've worked great if we identified that un-agonist-ed GLP-1 receptors were the problem, but we were never gonna do that. Instead, the most helpful health guidance is generally something along the lines of: "try to develop healthy habits." Sure, circular, whatever, but people get the idea and it works better than anything else. "Try to be more rational" I think can be similarly valuable.
There's definitely a fair amount of evidence for "the JCPOA helps Iran fund terror / destabilize the region / solidify its repressive rule." And I don't think it's fair to say there's no evidence of it also still allowing them to move in the direction of nukes—my understanding is that they were definitely building up the capacity to enrich uranium beyond JCPOA restrictions, even though they mimed compliance by not actually enriching to those levels. And, frankly, Israel has the most to lose from Iran going nuclear—the fact that they've been against the JCPOA since the Obama days is telling. (Unless that's discrimination too? Netanyahu isn't a good guy, but I think he's smarter than that. Maybe it was an egotistical, self-interested thing like the Hamas-cash-funneling—but then what do we say about Naftali Bennett's opposition?)
Even with all the poor aging of Scott's specific case, I don't think long-run welfare is actually extremely expensive to buy. A Libya-sized Marshall plan would've cost maybe $9 billion. (Marshall Plan in modern-ish dollars * Libya Pop / 1950 West Europe Pop = $175B * 7M/140M = ~$9B.) So make the $65/QALY estimate into $650, round it to $1000 for the sake of Afghanistan-y uncertainty, and that's still at the better end of "the amazing cost-effectiveness of preventative health care."
Both Democrat and Republican orthodoxy wants America to dominate the globe. Both parties see Taiwan as a lynchpin for this; one sees Israel as wholly necessary. China wants Taiwan in its sphere of influence and Iran wants to neutralize Israel, so conflict is likely to arise in some form so long as the situation remains unchanged.
Any direct kinetic action against Iran is likely unnecessary from Trump after Israel blew up most of the Hezbollah rocket stock. What's left for him to do?
Found this interesting and the main thesis compelling. Thanks!