Embracing Moral Relativism: 5 Foreign Policies
Vladimir Putin isn’t playing by the rules. Russia blatantly staged a rebellion in Crimea and then annexed it before committing its own troops to support a proxy border war against Ukraine. That violated numerous treaties and “waging aggressive war” is a primary war crime.
China is aiming missiles at Taiwan. China is building artificial islands in the Pacific and laying claim to territories and seas of other nations. China is “colonizing” Tibet and Xinjiang. China shows blatant disregard for sovereignty or self-determination by minority ethnic groups.
American policymakers condemn almost everyday these “departures from international norms” by Russia and China. ISIS and Iran are condemned as international pariahs. But these international actors don’t think of themselves that way. Putin doesn’t see himself as a violator of all international norms, for example. Different cultures have different politics and history, therefore different paradigms of foreign policy. What we condemn as “immoral” Putin sees as moral.
Does acknowledging many different moralities in international affairs make us moral relativists?
Often, those who point to the different moral considerations are accused of excusing the behavior of other nations, or of tyrants like Putin. But that’s not always the case. We are ostriches with our heads in the sand if we pretend that “rogue” nations & leaders share our moral understanding of the world. Accurately forecasting and responding to other nations’ actions requires us to recognize and understand when they are motivated by different paradigms with different moralities.
Adda B. Bozeman, a professor of international relations at Sarah Lawrence College, wrote a book about these different cultures. Called Politics and Culture in International History, Bozeman describes what she calls the major five cultures with different foreign policy paradigms:
- Western (Western Europe & the Anglophone nations)
- Byzantine (Russia & the Balkans)
- Islamic (Arabs, Turks, Persians)
- Middle Kingdom (China & Taiwan)
- India
Let’s cover each of these paradigms, starting with the Western & Byzantine (both grew out of the Roman Empire).
Prof. Bozeman’s premise in Politics & Culture in International History is that political system is the product of culture — therefore different cultures have vastly different ways of relating to other nations. Misunderstanding and conflict often result, as both sides are frustrated, with Westerners often claiming their opponents aren’t “playing by the rules of the game.”
New Rome and Old Rome
The Roman Empire is central to explaining the world today. Bozeman sources the ideas of order, justice, and tranquility with the Imperium of the Ceasers — in many ways subsequent history is an attempt to re-establish the stability, peace, and prosperity often (sometimes falsely) attributed to Rome.
After the Western Roman Empire “finally” died its “final” time in 476 AD, the Eastern Empire centered at Byzantium faced the “barbarians” from the north and west in addition to the organized opposition of Parthian & then Persian empires in the east. Yet, in the Eastern (Byzantine) Empire, political authority was not interrupted. Thus, the Emperor remained as the ultimate political authority, unchallenged by clergymen or jurists. No “rule of law” or “separation of church and state” emerged in the Byzantine system, all power was the emperor’s.
In fact, all power in the world was Byzantium’s. The Byzantines saw themselves as the only legitimate civilization and polity. The barbarians and pagans of the periphery had no legitimacy — they existed to be played off against each other. Beset by enemies upon every side, the empire’s fate was always in the balance. The Byzantines sought no conquest, preservation was their goal.The Byzantines manipulated; duplicitous and subversive simultaneously, they believed what preserved the regime, the Byzantine imperium, was what was ethical. (Since the emperor, the church, and the state were all one, there could be no contradiction between them, anyway).
Although they were destroyed at the dawn of the modern era, the Byzantines profoundly influenced those pagans to the north, who then claimed the mantle of the Ceasars — Moscow, “The Third Rome” (after the demises of first Rome, then Byzantium). Says Bozeman:
The Russians, like the Byzantines, accepted orthodoxy and governmental absolutism as the chief principles of political organization, and professed the supremacy of their own state in the society of nations.
The Byzantine origins of Russian politics explains the great paradox of geopolitics — how Russia can be in Europe and yet not of Europe. Because the other two-thirds of the European continent, from Portugal to Poland, developed out of a different legacy of Rome.
In the West, different barbarian kings struggled for supremacy, but none could claim the Imperium. From the beginning, there was no “superstate” comparable to Byzantium in the West. No leader existed who embodied the state, the church, and the law all in one. Secular and sacred authority disputed against each other the entire Middle Ages, with neither emerging victorious over the other at the same time they had developed “rules of the game” by appealing to Roman precedent and law. Out of chaos came order — the bloodletting must be stopped. Chivalry became the rules of war and diplomacy the rules of politics.
Even if those rules of the game were not followed, almost everyone in Western Europe agreed the rules existed. Laws and treaties became preferable means to solve conflict, rather than war. Subsequently, the idea of sovereignty emerged (later explicitly acknowledged in 1648 Treaty of Westphalia) — each political unit was equal in the sight of international law, regardless of its relative military or economic power. The natural extension of that notional equality before law was that each state should act to maintain the balance of power. The alignment of actual, real power must be evened out to ensure the notional equality — to prevent one nation from becoming so powerful that it overwhelmed its weaker neighbors.
Thus, in the Western conception, the ultimate violence — war — was used to maintain the ultimate peace — equality in international law. Theorists and thinkers, such as the Prussian Carl von Clausewitz in his famous Vom Krieg, logically extended the “laws of war” down to the most minute details of military conflict. Yet today, some American military thinkers say we are in a “post-Clausewitzean moment.” What they are failing to see is that the insurgents in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the Russians staging coups in Crimea, and the Chinese building militarized artificial islands all share something in common — they never had a “Clausewitzean moment” to begin with! Their histories and political cultures exist outside of the Western experience that developed sovereignty, international law, and the modern nation-state.
The West developed sovereignty, international law, and the balance of power to preserve those principles. The Byzantines, and their Russian successors, placed all political/moral legitimacy in their autocrat, then undertook any means necessary to preserve their empire against the peripheral barbarians.
Unity & Frustration in Islam
Let’s talk about the movement that eventually destroyed those Byzantines — Islam. Founded by the Prophet Muhammad in Arabia, this religion became a unifying force that transformed the Arabs from internecine tribal warfare to global conquest in a single generation. Islam clearly delineated the world into two opposing camps, the Dar-al-Islam (House of Islam) and the Dar-al-Harb (House of War). The Dar-al-Islam comprised all Muslim lands, and the House of War all the lands yet to be conquered. Thus, Muslims believed fundamentally in the political/religious unity of all their co-religonists and in its constant expansion. Bozeman explained:
The Dar-al-Islam was cohesive as an empire only when in a state of continuous forward motion … Any boundary once reached was due to be transcended by another forward thrust, if not immediately, than in the very near future.
Like the Byzantines, the Islamic warriors believed in a total amalgamation of religion, law, and politics. However, unlike the Byzantines, Islam had no clearly defined, acclaimed autocrat to guide it. After the death of Muhammad in 632 AD, a succession of “Caliphs” acted as the global head of Islam. But the succession encountered only schism. Multiple caliphates and sultanates competed for the legitimacy of the global leadership of Islam. Since everyone agreed Islam was just one unit, the ideas of notional equality and sovereignty that took root in Western Europe in the Middle Ages were inconceivable to Muslim politicians of the time.
For these reasons, the history of Islam is of early expansion and success. But that legacy of unity lifted up a grand goal that has eluded anyone attempting to rise above the later history of chronic disunity, but at the same time prevents the emergence of a stable status quo between Islamic powers. See today, with Islamic countries hostile to the West, but even more so to other Muslim countries of different persuasions.
The Middle Kingdom
Chinese thought, beginning in antiquity, has regarded China as the sole world state. At the center of the world, the Middle Kingdom was to be a unified, moral civilization gradually expanding in order to elevate barbarians into civilized Chinese. Confucian thought taught natural harmony between heavenly and earthly forces with the entire universe as a holistic peaceful community. Heaven, naturally superior, delegates to a righteous ruler the Mandate of Heaven. This emperor, the Son of Heaven, is to exercise global dominion but with personal character and high moral principles.
Bozeman, for her part, sums up Confucius’ teachings on administration here as “only men who are able to rule themselves can undertake the government of others.” For Confucius and the Chinese politicians who followed him, peace and the union of all China were the primary political goals. Confucius’ disciple Mencius explained that only one type of warfare can be morally good — punitive action ordered under the Mandate of Heaven to right a great wrong.
Of course, civil wars, internal dissensions, coups, and foreign conquest all figure prominently in Chinese history. But Confucian historians understood these dynastic regime changes simply as transfers of the Mandate of Heaven — the previous dynasty became corrupt, so Heaven transferred its Mandate to a new Emperor. Post facto, this transfer of Mandate is easy to see — in the moment, it was more difficult for Chinese politicians to pinpoint the exact time at which the Mandate was transferred, leaving loyalty to past Emperor versus new conqueror/potential emperor morally ambiguous.
While Maoist Communism challenged the traditional economics of China, Confucian thought has largely remained as the cultural lens. In modern times, the corruption of Chiang Kaishek and the KMT lost them the Mandate of Heaven, which obviously (to everyone except of course those inside the KMT) passed to the Chinese Communist Party and Mao. Once we understand the primacy of the ideas of the Mandate of Heaven and the moral imperative for the unity of China, we can understand why both the governments of China and Taiwan both insist upon the United States maintaining a ‘One China’ Policy. If Beijing or Taipei blink, and allow or admit the legitimacy of Taiwan’s separate statehood they lose unity and the moral justification for their rule, as understood by Chinese political thought.
Of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t mentioned the one major departure from Confucian thought in China’s history — Lord Shang. Shang lived during the difficult Warring States Period in the 3rd Century BC and discarded Confucious’ ideas as inadequate to reunite China. He put forward the unity of China as the great goal, but de-emphasized any moral requirements upon the rulers. The new dynasty he tutored was able to unify China, but then was quickly overthrown — justifying to its Confucian critics that its lack of morals lost it the Mandate of Heaven, and consigning Lord Shang’s theories to a footnote in comparison to Confucious’ influence upon Chinese geopolitical thought.
The Law of the Fish
The final international relations paradigm identified by Adda Bozeman is India. Remember, her theory holds that politics is the product of culture, and therefore different cultures have different politics and political morality.
India’s great practical political philosopher, its Machiavelli if you will, was Chanakya (371–283 BC) who authored the Arthashastra. In this treatise, he taught that success is the true measure of statesmanship. Since little fish in the ocean are the nourishment of bigger fish, Chanakya analogized this to politics as The Law of the Fish. The Law of the Fish means no “family of nations” or international law regulates affairs between states, only power alone can bring peace between kings.
War is the continuation of politics by other means and the ultimate arbiter of all disputes between states. Yet, success being the measure of statesmanship, war must not be an end in itself — war that caused mutual ruin to both parties was bad and a failure. Kings of equal, superior, and inferior power each had different behaviors toward each other based on the relative power of their states and ability to call upon allies. Bozeman summarized this belief as: “Each state must manipulate its relations with other states in such a way as never to allow itself to be overwhelmed.”
The Arthashasta provided a tool for wise kings to understand and implement their foreign relations, the mandalas. This was a series of concentric circles. The immediate circle surrounding a king is full of his enemies, the next circle are his natural allies, the third circle are further enemies who could reinforce or support his closer enemies, followed by another circle of allies of his allies, etc. Each of these circles could be cracked (a king could manipulate his enemies to turn upon each other instead, or two of his own allies could go to war against each other). With each king set at the center of his own mandalas, sketching Indian politics from 300 BC to 1850 AD would be complex and almost-ever-changing.
Thus, in some ways India’s international relations paradigm foreshadowed what would develop in the medieval West — multiple states with their own rights to self-existence and an emphasis on the careful balance of power. However, these beliefs did not develop into idea of state sovereignty or a binding international law upon nations as a means of conducting politics (as they did in the post-Roman West).
Chanakya had distinguished between the Artha, practical politics governed by the Law of the Fish and the Dharma, a political theory based on peaceful coexistence and morality. He taught the ultimate goal was to be able to replace the Law of the Fish with the Dharma. So his political model was morally aspirational, albeit different from Europe. The growth of Buddhism in India encouraged this tendency toward unifying the country as a step toward Dharma.
Today, India still lives the Law of the Fish, carefully balancing its power against Pakistan, against China, and — until 2004, as the leader of the ‘Non-Aligned Movement’ — remained aloof and achieved its own interests by balancing the United States and the Soviet Union against each other.
Concluding
Acknowledging different moralities in international affairs does not make us moral relativists. It makes us realists who understand how people in different cultures actually think, and therefore how their governments will realistically behave. Different cultures have different politics and history, and therefore different paradigms of foreign policy.
This article originally appeared as a series on my old blog, The Daily Dose. You can subscribe to my email newsletter at Troika Today.
