In class this past week we touched on Motive vs. Intention and whether that was a better title for this module. Motive being interest based, and Intention being on the idea side. The main critique to this approach is that you can never truly know what is going inside an actor's head. You can try to evaluate past actions and other variables to predict what an actor will do, and what their motivations are, but you can never actually know for sure.
I was listening to a recent episode of NPR Worldview from May 24th that really resonated with this topic. (Highly recommend this show in general!) In this episode, they hosted a sanctions expert, George Lopez, who is Professor emeritus of peace studies at the University of Notre Dame and also served on UN Security Council panel of experts for NK sanctions, to discuss the on-again and off-again summit with North Korea. They were talking about the very abrupt cancellation of the summit by President Trump and the rational behind it.
Professor Lopez discussed how big a surprise the abrupt cancellation was to many international circles because everything that had been happening up until that point would not have indicated a need to cancel. A delay would have been more expected.
Lopez proposed that President Trump was pursuing a "strategy of chaos and confusion" because there was not a real clear reason for why this would have been canceled. President Moon of South Korea had just met with President Trump 24 hours before the cancellation and was taken by surprise by the administration action and President Trump's own remarks to the press prior to this point did not indicate that we were approaching such an impasse that the summit would not continue.
Lopez brings up the recent insults directed toward Vice President Mike Pence (in response to his Libya comments) as a possible reason for the cancellation. But he makes the counter point that if we "take at face value... that the insults against vice President Pence's comments upped the level of hostility to point where we can't have a meeting.... that means we had no solid diplomatic strategy to deal with what should have been anticipated increases in North Korean rhetoric as we get closer to the summit."
He lists a number of other possible reasons for this abrupt cancellation, including 1.) intentional sabotage by Bolton and Pence and 2.) incredibly poor communication among the upper echelon of the administration. Both obviously very damaging to the US credentials on foreign policy. But to this day we still don't really have an answer.
There has been a legitimate disagreement on the definition of what denuclearization means, with the US talking about the denuclearization of North Korea and NK understanding it to mean the denuclearization of the peninsula. But Lopez makes the point that this would normally expect to bring a delay to the summit rather than an out-right cancellation of talks.
The episode is now a week old at this point, and as of 5 hours ago the summit is back on. So perhaps Trump's strategy of chaos was an intentional tool to jockey for more power. But if the past 2 years has been any indication, we'll never know.
Overall I think this episode is a great supporting example of the counter argument to following a motive vs. intention model and is definitely worth a listen!
Michael, thank you – what a great comment! I absolutely agree with you.
ReplyDeleteWhere we place each country or even an international or regional organization in the two-by-two is very much a question of what part of an organization we’re talking about, and at what point in time. As discussed in class, since various components of the United Nations have different interests and operate differently, I would place the UN in the lower right quadrant, and the UNSC - into the upper left corner.
We may no longer have one clear-cut superpower on the world stage. However, many parts of the world still prove that having a hegemon in their region is very real. We could also act as a superpower, by sending the world a message that we’ll do what we want, when we want, and how we want it. But it has to make sense.
Take imposing tariffs, for instance. It makes no economic sense, which is why it’s no surprise Democrats and Republicans are unanimously against it. A nationalistic approach to economy is detrimental to global, as well as our own national economy.
Further, pulling out of all global deals will lead us “from America First to America Alone, “as Ohio Senator John Kasich so aptly put it.
Having said this, nothing should be a “one size fits all” policy, and practicing containment at times may be necessary. For instance, ZTE, a 70,000-employee Chinese multinational telecommunications equipment and systems company, needs to be stopped from potentially facilitating economic espionage (from obtaining crucial American-made microchips and software).
In your most recent blog, you refer to a "strategy of chaos and confusion” by this administration. In that same context of the on-again-off-again summit with North Korea, some consider the unpredictability of this administration to be an asset. Which prompts me to ask what concessions has North Korea agreed to so far? We must realize we have a very long way to go, and this cannot be just a PR show.