(The latest version of this page is at Pattern Descriptions. An archived copy of this page is held at https://www.patternsofpower.org/edition02/747.htm)
International political leadership can be exerted by persuasion, using only the force of argument, but when it uses economic and military pressure it becomes what this book describes as a ‘coercive foreign policy’ (6.7.7.1). In addition to the political disadvantages of such a policy, there is a security impact:
· Bullies are never popular and unpopularity is costly. A habit of coercive behaviour encourages other countries to raise their own defences and, following the line that ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’, it motivates them to help others to resist coercion; for example Hugo Chávez, the President of Venezuela, saw it as being in his interests to help any country which opposed America – including Cuba and Iran, for example.[1]
· The use of coercion results in adverse propaganda (7.4.3), which increases the military threat.
· The use of military force (7.4.1), by one country against another, is never like a cowboy film where the good guy shoots the bad guy and those on the good side live happily ever after. People have friends and relatives, who become highly motivated to avenge deaths which they see as unjustified (and this is, of course, particularly true when innocent people have been killed). The US ‘kill list’ in the “war against terrorism” grows exponentially, as names are removed from the top of the list whilst new recruits are appended to it as a result of reactions against the strikes.[2] This offers a grim future of a war without end.
· Imposed solutions are unstable (7.4.5), so problems will resurface.
· There are some specific risks associated with trying to bring about political change in another country:
‒ Revolution, or very radical change, rarely brings about the intended consequences (6.2.5).
‒ Local people may not understand the political thinking of intervention by a foreign country, even if it is nominally for their benefit.[3] Their reaction towards any interference is likely to be hostile, resulting in armed resistance (7.4.1.4).
© PatternsofPower.org, 2014
[1] On 7 January 2012, Reuters published an article entitled Factbox: Venezuela's ties with Iran, which described the ties between the two countries:
“Both fierce anti-U.S. ideologues, Ahmadinejad and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez have become close political and commercial allies in recent years, to the annoyance of Washington.”
This article was available in May 2014 at http://www.mobile.reuters.com/article/Deals/idUSTRE8060DO20120107.
Hugo Chávez has also had close ties with Cuba: on 8 November 2010 the website Venezuelanalysis.com published an article entitled Cuba and Venezuela Commemorate 10th Anniversary of Bilateral Cooperation, which mentioned the two countries as forming “an anti-imperialist alliance”; this was available in May 2014 at http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/5772.
[2] The Oscar-nominated documentary film Dirty Wars revealed that President Obama personally authorises the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), which has ever-expanding "kill lists". The film was reviewed in an article entitled JSoc: Obama's secret assassins, which was available in February 2014 at http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/feb/03/jsoc-obama-secret-assassins. Jeremy Scahill also wrote a book, Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield, whose website was then at http://dirtywars.org/the-book.
The JSOC website was then at http://www.socom.mil/pages/jointspecialoperationscommand.aspx.
[3] Steve Chapman wrote an article entitled Burned in Afghanistan, with the subtitle Is there any point in staying?, which was published in the Chicago Tribune on 1 March 2012. He made several powerful points, including these:
“Many if not most Afghans have never heard of the 9/11 attacks. Even the deputy chairman of the government's High Peace Council told The Wall Street Journal he doesn't believe al-Qaida destroyed the World Trade Center.
So what can we expect ordinary people to think when they see the country overrun with armed foreigners who sometimes kill and injure innocent civilians? Or when they hear that those infidels are burning Qurans?”
This article was available in May 2014 at http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-03-01/news/ct-oped-0301-chapman-20120301_1_afghan-troops-afghan-security-forces-coalition-military-bases.