Charles W. King

On April 13th, 2018, the Trump administration bombed a number sites in Syria in response to Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons in the ongoing Syrian Civil War. In the aftermath much has been made of the fact that the United States warned the Russian government that the strikes were incoming. In the current political climate in the U.S. this kind of coordination with Russia is being characterized in some quarters as further evidence in support of the allegations that the Trump presidential campaign colluded with Russia. Regardless of these allegations, the act of warning the Russian government of the April 13th strikes is not unusual. De-escalation procedures like this are common, and are a specific strategic choice that the United States and other have made in the past for good reason.

Throughout the Korean War and the Vietnam War both North Korean and North Vietnamese forces received substantial aid from the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union. Both sides maintained that American forces were not engaged with, killing, and being killed by Chinese and Russian forces. This was a fiction agreed upon by all sides, particularly in the air wars over Korea and Vietnam. Many of the pilots were Russian or Chinese, as were the crews and officers of much of North Korea’s and North Vietnam’s air defenses. The American, Chinese, and Soviet governments understood that if they admitted that their pilots were regularly engaged with forces of the opposing super-powers the conflicts would escalate from regional one to global, and likely nuclear, wars. Despite the intense competition between the world powers, this kind of escalation was not something they desired, and the mutually agreed upon fiction allowed that. A famous example of this is illustrated in the theatrical depiction of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Roger Donaldson’s Thirteen Days. An American pilot returns from taking pictures of missile sites in Cuba with what are clearly bullet holes in his aircraft, but having received instructions from the White House he jokingly tells his ground crew that he, “Ran into a flock of sparrows.” Admitting he had taken anti-aircraft fire would have precipitated a response that would have escalated the conflict just as the United States and Soviet Union were attempting to reign it in.

Warning rivals or even the targets of incoming attacks is also a long standing de-escalation practice, though not always a successful one. On July 22, 1946, the King David Hotel in Jerusalem was bombed. The southern wing of the hotel housed the central offices of the government of the British Mandate of Palestine, the target of the bombing. The attack was carried out by the Irgun, a right-wing militant zionist organization. Attempts were made by the Irgun to warn the British, but what happened remains controversial. What is for certain is that the hotel was not evacuated and ninety-one people were killed. The attempted warnings are nonetheless important for understanding the Irgun’s objectives. The bombing would doubtless be an escalation, but the target was the hotel, a symbol of British rule, rather than the people. By trying to mitigate the loss of life the Irgun attempted to escalate the conflict, but not too much. The destruction of building and other capital expenditures without killing the people who work there remains an important, if difficult practice in the conduct of warfare.

The decisions to inform the Russian government of incoming strikes against chemical weapons facilities in Syria is in keeping with a long-standing practice of de-escalation. Preventing the direct engagement between forces of two global powers in a warzone where they both possess a military presence is difficult but essential. The use of warnings to ensure that attacks destroy capital investments in things like weapons programs without loss of life is a feature of modern warfare along with precisions weapons and advanced surveillance. Warning the Russians of this particular attack demonstrates its limited objectives and the desire to prevent escalation to a conflict between the United States and the Russian Federation.

Charles W. King

One of the most important questions and subjects of debate in contemporary academic history is how Europe came to dominate the the rest of the world at the start of the twentieth century. At the height of European empire before World War One the sun never set on the British Empire and the French, British, Russian, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman empires controlled vast swaths of land from the Cape of Good Hope to the Bering Straits. Since the initial colonization of the Caribbean by the Spanish Empire in the 1500s, European powers steadily expanded their control over the Americas, Asia, and Africa. It is understandable that for decades historians and other academics searched further and further back into history to discover the origins of Europe’s considerable modern advantages. German sociologist Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism was one of the first academic works to examine what made modern Europe. Since its publication in 1905 others have found the in medieval fairs and markets the rudimentary origins of the industrial capitalism that flourished in Europe in the nineteenth century.

The problem with these quests for the historical origins of European industrial capitalism further and further back in European history is that they neglect the rest of the world. In the twentieth century academic historians have begun to question the existing narrative of the origins of European dominance and prosperity. Historians of the Middle East like Beshara Doumani have found that important economic innovations like the commodification of land was not imported from Europe but arose independently and simultaneously in Palestine and other Ottoman provinces in the eighteenth century. As better histories of the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Indian Sub-Continent and Southern and East Asia have reached western academics in the past three decades it became necessary to reassess whether or not Europe was as far a head of the rest of the world as it had been thought to be throughout the Renaissance and Enlightenment. These histories have shown that the markets of medieval Europe were not substantially different from those of the rest of the world at the time, and suggested that origins of industrial capitalism lie elsewhere.

Kenneth Pomeranz’s The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (2000) popularized the term and pushed the date for the divergence of between Europe and the rest of the world back into the nineteenth century. By comparing economic inputs and outputs Pomeranz and others argue that Europe did not begin to outpace China and the rest of the world until the Industrial revolution. The date of the divergence is not a settled issue in academic history, with many continuing to place it in the eighteenth rather than nineteenth century. However few serious academics now argue that European hegemony has its roots in the medieval period.

This academic re-examination of previously settled issues is important for contemporary policy-makers. As academics learn more about the economic and political histories of non-european powers policy-makers can be better informed about the nature of economic decisions and how access to resources like arable land and fossil fuels have affected societies in the past, how they might do so in the future, and what policies might be needed to maintain economic prosperity and political stability. These histories also correct previously held conceptions of pre-modern African, Asian, and American societies as backwards and iluminate how non-europeans experienced centuries of European domination. These perspectives are important for policy-makers and government officials attempting to create effective policy and relationships. The question, “Why Europe?” is essential not only for academics. It is one of the most important questions for historians and policy-makers all over the world because its answer informs decision making in the present.

Charles W. King

The tariffs imposed by the Trump Administration on steel and aluminum have kicked off a series of tit for tat retaliation between the United States and the tariffs stated target; the People’s Republic of China. The most recent Chinese tariffs on over a hundred American imports to China will amount to roughly $50 billion as a response to tariffs of a similar size directed specifically at China. The Administration, and President Trump in particular, contend that the trade deficit with China is a dire situation and that a trade war with the People’s Republic will be easy to win. The history of trade wars suggest that this conclusion may be dangerous.

The desire to have exports exceed imports as a key drive of economic growth is a key principle not of twentieth century capitalism, but of the mercantilist policies that dominated Europe throughout the Renaissance and Early Modern period. The British, Spanish, French, and Dutch Empires strictly regulated whom their colonial subjects could trade with, and prohibited the production of finished goods in their colonies to preserve them as markets for goods from the imperial core. While this was profitable for the imperial crowns and those companies granted monopolies by royal charter, it was the colonies that were able to skirt these laws, like the Thirteen American Colonies, that ultimately flourished economically. By the dawn of the twentieth century mercantilism was all but dead, slain by a hundred years of Freedom of the Seas and Trade imposed by the Royal Navy after the Napoleonic wars. Free trade allowed not only the British Isles to flourish, but the Empire’s colonies and trading partners abroad flourished as well.

Regardless of the trend towards greater free trade fostered by the British Empire and the United States, tariffs and other forms of economic warfare remained a tool of twentieth century geopolitics. During the 1970s the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries embargoed the United States and other nations that supported Israel during the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War. Saudi Arabia and by extension O.P.E.C. learned lessons from the mixed results of these embargoes and in recent years have let the price of oil plummet to price American and other producers out of the market to preserve O.P.E.C.’s global market share. Russia regularly uses its control of natural gas resources important to Europe as a tool to extract diplomatic concessions, and the United States is tightening the effectiveness of oil embargoes on North Korea. Economic restrictions can be a useful tool for foreign policy, but they are not without their dangers.

During the Great Depression American exports dropped by nearly half. The consensus of economists and historians is that the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 and the tariffs imposed by America’s trading partners in retaliation were a major contributing factor to this drop, and the severity of the Depression. While tariffs protect the domestic industries whose goods they target, any consumer or company who relies on those goods will pay a higher price, usually for inferior goods. Tariffs decrease competition in the domestic economy, one of the drivers of health in consumer driven economies. The cycle of retaliation that tariffs start shrinks market access.

Market access as been a major principle of American foreign policy since the American Revolution, and trade conflicts may sacrifice these gains. As the United States gets deeper and deeper into the cycle of trade restrictions with the People’s Republic of China and other major economic powers it is important for policy makers to recognize that the economy of the United States has always benefited from competitive advantage and eschewed self-sufficiency and autarky as an objective. Trade wars, even victorious ones, pose a serious threat to the health of such economies. Moving to a autarkic mercantilist economy would be costly and counter to long standing American capitalist principles.

Charles W. King

Vladimir Putin was recently re-elected for another term as President of the Russian Federation. Egypt held a poll in which the erstwhile opponent of Abel Fattah el-Sisi told reporters that seeing el-Sisi’s name on the ballot he could not help but vote for him. The People’s Republic of China has jettisoned its post-Mao restrictions on ten year terms for President, cementing Xi Jinping’s position as the most powerful Chinese ruler since Mao Zedong. While the latter was not technically an election, it did require the accession of the National People’s Congress. All of these recent events speak to the question of states derive legitimacy in the twenty-first century.

For centuries the divine right of kings was the leading theory of legitimacy in Europe. By the dint of the will of God, the royal houses of England, France, Austria, and many more were the legitimate rules of their domains. In a very real sense both Putin’s Russia and the People’s Republic of China since Deng Xiaoping have rested the legitimacy of their governments on economic prosperity. All of these belie what political scientists consider to be the root of sovereignty; a monopoly of violence.

The crowned heads of Europe, before they claimed the divine right of kings, were feudal warlords. Historically it is after establishing a monopoly of violence over a territory that legitimacy is established. A conqueror imposes their will through violence, and over time legitimates their continued rule and the rule of their successors through the sanctioned use of violence by the state as well as other means. For many states this meant transitioning to constitutional and republican systems.

In democracies that derive from the traditions of Locke and Rousseau sovereignty comes from the consent of the governed.Elections are not only a way for the people to select their representation, but also serve to re-legitimize the state. In countries like Russia and Egypt where elections are not free what purpose do they serve? For decades African and Central Asian dictatorships have used sham elections to prove to the outside world that their rule was legitimate. The Soviet Union used similar elections to legitimize the creation of communist satellite states after World War Two. But in most cases these rigged contests are seen for what they, so they must serve another purpose.

An election is a large and complicated process, taking hundreds or thousands of people to organize. Rigging an election takes even more manpower. The ability to mobilize the people required to have the kind of turn out and margin that re-elected Putin is a clear demonstration of the power of the Russian state and Putin’s control of it. The ability to stage rigged elections is a stand in for more obvious and bloody forms of violence, but at its core it is a form of state violence. Rigged elections like those in Russia and Egypt have not only foreign but domestic audiences. They demonstrate to the population that the state is powerful and organized, and that opposition to that system is futile and dangerous. They are relatively cheap in blood and treasure compared to putting down riots in the streets.

Democracies attempt to put as much distance as possible between their legitimacy and the state’s monopoly of legitimate violence through elections and representative government. It is important to recognize that in the late twentieth and early twenty first century elections can serve another purpose, as a relatively bloodless demonstration of the state’s monopoly of violence.

Charles W. King

Recent sovereign debt crises in Europe, the Trump Administration’s vociferous objections to trade deficits have, and the growing American national debt have many in Congress and the public increasingly concerned about debt as an instrument of national policy. More and more American states are passing balanced budget amendments forcing them to pass revenue neutral budgets each fiscal year, and some are pushing for the adoption of a federal balanced budget amendment. While this sounds like fiscal responsibility, the issuance of debt by governments is a tremendously important tool of domestic and foreign policy. The former is illustrated by the importance of bond programs to the New Deal and World War 2, the latter is less obvious.

The First Bank of the United States, established by Alexander Hamilton, the first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, in 1791 was created not only to raise revenue for the new federal government and standardize currency across the new country, but also as an important tool of foreign policy. During the course of the American Revolution the Colonies built up a significant amount of debt to European creditors, France among others. The First Bank of the United States took ownership of these debts, meaning that if the new government failed, those European creditors would never recieve payment. This gave France and other European nations a reason to continue to support the fledgeling United States, and to permit the open trading relationships that the United States needed to prosper in order to service the debt. The nationalization of the colonies war debts made those creditors invested in the success of the United States, an effect that the issuance of government debt continues to have today.

Debt forgiveness is also an important foreign policy tool. After World War Two the United States owned a considerable amount of European debt that the post-war European nations were incapable of paying back. The State Department’s Office of Foreign Building Operations (now the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations) convinced Congress to turn the debt over to them. The F.B.O. would write off the foreign debt in exchange for goods and services from the debtor countries. The F.B.O. purchased the historical palaces that are now the U.S. Ambassador’s residences in Paris and Rome with this debt. It filled American embassies all over the world with cutting edge Knoll furniture made in Europe by paying for the furniture with debt write offs. European countries were ecstatic to write off their war debts in this way because it put money into their national economies and industries rather than sending it abroad to the United States. The F.B.O.’s creative use of debt facilitated a blossoming of American diplomacy around the world and helped the European economic recovery.

The United States and other major backers of the Bretton Woods system that includes the World Bank and International Monetary Fund regularly use access to credit, as well as debt forgiveness and restructuring as leverage to get developing nations to implement specific economic or political policies. Japan and China both own large stockpiles of American national debt in the form of Treasury Bonds. These stockpiles make Japan and China investors in American prosperity. While the Chinese owned debt is considered to be a danger, they also provide an early warning system, as China would have to either call those debts in—damaging both the Chinese and American economies—or write them off in a conflict. American and European sanctions regimes against the Russian Federation do not currently include Russian sovereign bonds, but they could and this would be a significant increase in the pressure on the Russian State. National debt is only a millstone when other policies put a nation’s ability to service that debt in danger, the ability to issue debt is an important strategic policy tool for the United States and all national governments.