The Contest of the Century (33 page)

ENTER THE SWING STATES

To the other members of the guerrilla group,
she was known as Estela. When the Brazilian military arrested her in 1970, one of the worst years for violence during the two-decade-long dictatorship, she was subjected to a ferocious array of torture techniques. Her head, thighs, and breasts were given electric shocks, and she was suspended naked and upside down on a stick. She eventually suffered a hemorrhage of the uterus, which prevented her from having more children.

Dilma Rousseff is now the first female president of Brazil, having won in a comfortable election in 2010 for the center-left Workers’ Party. But her first entry into national political life was as a member of the Palmares Armed Revolutionary Vanguard, a far-left guerrilla group which took up arms to overthrow the military dictators who ran the country from 1964 to 1985. Her predecessor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was locked up by the military for his political activity against the dictatorship. His predecessor, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, fled to exile in Chile and then France after the military ordered his arrest. The man that both Lula and Dilma defeated to win the presidency, José Serra, was also an exile in Chile. For the last twenty years, Brazil has been run by a generation of leaders who got into political life to oppose the military dictatorship and to fight against the abuses committed against Brazilians by their own government.

Yet, over the last decade, Brazil has been a persistent critic of Western-led efforts at humanitarian intervention in countries where other dictators were conducting grotesque abuses of their populations. Celso Amorim, Lula’s foreign minister, once described the idea of the “Responsibility to Protect” as “
droit d’ingérence
… in new clothes,” a concept dating back to the seventeenth century about interfering in the affairs of another nation. On the occasions when Brazil has been a rotating member of the UN Security Council, it has often used its votes to express skepticism about U.S.-backed pressure or interventions. In 2004, when international outrage at the violence in Darfur was escalating, Brazil joined China in opposing any resolution on Sudan that smacked of new international sanctions. When China and Russia vetoed a UN Security Council resolution in October 2011 which criticized the violent oppression of opposition in Syria, Brazil was again on the Security Council. This time it abstained.

Just as in China, the defense of state sovereignty has been hard-wired into Brazilian elites for several generations. In the early twentieth century, Brazil was opposed to the use of military interventions to collect on the bad debts of countries that had defaulted on bond payments. (Before the IMF, it was the marines that enforced repayment of debts in developing countries.) Suspicions about the great powers hardened in the 1950s, with the era of decolonization. At the end of the Cold
War, Brazil did not see the West’s new enthusiasm for humanitarian interventions as part of a welcome, modern activism in defense of the oppressed; instead, it saw this as the old wine of colonial interference, in new bottles.

Among the elites of many other large developing countries, it is pretty easy to find similar sentiments, especially in nations with a recent colonial past. In that high-profile 2011 vote on Syria during which Brazil abstained, South Africa and India also happened to be on the Security Council at the time. They also abstained. In South Africa, the years of struggle against the apartheid regime left the African National Congress deeply cynical about the motives of Western governments in preaching humanitarian intervention. In the six decades since its independence, India’s self-image has been intimately linked to the concepts of the Non-Aligned Movement, making it another natural skeptic of Western motives. Susan Rice, who was the U.S. ambassador at the UN during the first Obama administration, chided Brazil, India, and South Africa for taking positions that “one might not have anticipated, given that each of them came out of strong and proud democratic traditions.” Yet, on the face of it, Brazil, India, and South Africa appear to have more in common with China about the basic ground rules of how the international system should work—at least more than they do with Washington.

In many ways, the dispute over intervention and sovereignty is one part of a much broader challenge that the U.S. faces as a result of the big shifts in relative power that are taking place around the world. Even those who deny that America is in decline recognize that economic power is becoming more diffuse as a group of populous, developing nations try to turn strong growth rates into a bigger international presence. China is not the only potential challenger to the international order that the U.S. erected after the Second World War. There is now a new generation of powers, not just India, South Africa, and Brazil, but also Turkey, South Korea, and Indonesia, who are in some ways the floating voters of international politics, new entrants to the top table of global governance who have not yet decided how they want to apply the influence that their economic heft is accruing. If, more often than not, these governments were to side with China and Russia, it would represent a much broader threat to Washington’s ability to keep setting the international agenda.

Of course, the U.S. has faced a parallel challenge before, in the 1960s and 1970s, when the dominance it enjoyed after the war was put into question by the rise of Western Europe and of Japan. It seems obvious in retrospect that these countries would make common cause with the U.S. and become part of the unified political entity we now call the Western powers. But at the time it was not so clear—think about the Gaullist efforts to distance France from the U.S., or the period of intense economic rivalry with Japan that lasted well into the 1990s. Washington was able to find ways to integrate these new powers into the institutions and rules that it had established. The U.S. is facing another, similar inflection point. Either it finds a way to embrace some of these newer powers, or it will see its influence over the international community gradually slide. That is true for a range of issues, from trade rules to the membership of international institutions, but it is also very much the case with the values at the heart of the international system. It is hard to argue for the moral legitimacy of the U.S. approach to abusive dictators when several of the biggest democracies in the world are openly opposed. Handing out lectures to these countries about their democratic heritage will not do the trick.

It might seem surprising at first, but one long-term U.S. objective should be to try not to alienate Russia. Of course, in many of the most contested votes at the UN in recent years, Russia and China have been very much on the same side. Indeed, Moscow has often been more of an obstacle than Beijing. Many Russia analysts suspect that Vladimir Putin has taken confidence from the success of Chinese authoritarianism as he has cemented his own control of power in Moscow. Some American neoconservatives warn that the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, a security group that brings together Russia, China, and several Central Asian countries, is becoming an authoritarian anti-NATO. The antipathy in the U.S. toward Russia is particularly pronounced on the right—and was given voice when presidential candidate Mitt Romney called Russia “without doubt, our number one geopolitical foe.” Yet the obsession with Russia among some on the American right is itself something of a Cold War hangover that vastly overstates Moscow’s influence. Russian power rises and falls these days with the price of oil, not the potency of its political system or its economy. More to the point, it is a major
strategic error to overplay the ideological affinity of the two countries. A China that behaves more and more like an ambitious great power is likely to be seen by Russia as being as much a rival as a partner. Moscow is already worried about the political and economic inroads that Beijing is making into Central Asia, about Chinese migration into eastern Siberia, and about Chinese naval intentions in the northern-Pacific Arctic region. As Chinese power grows in the coming decades, Russian anxieties are only likely to expand, too. During the Cold War, Washington was so intent on opposing communism around the globe that it ignored the emerging split in the Sino-Soviet relationship throughout the 1960s, until Richard Nixon finally exploited the opportunity when he met Mao in 1972. Some conservatives would have America make the same mistake again. Russia will never be a close partner to the U.S., but its own competition with Beijing will afford Washington opportunities to peel Russia away from China on the occasional issue. At the very least, the U.S. should be at pains to avoid pushing the two countries together by treating them as a new authoritarian axis.

When it comes to finding more common ground with the large democracies in the developing world, the prospects are actually much better than their voting record at the UN over the last few years would suggest. Beneath the surface, there has been something of a revolution in political attitudes in the developing world toward human rights and outside interference in crises. Two decades ago, the dominant position in Africa and Latin America was an energetic defense of the Westphalian order and its rigid interpretation of sovereignty. There was little appetite for interference, and strong opposition to collective commitments on human rights. The Cold War had only added to the distaste for being manipulated by great powers. In recent years, however, there has been a gradual but important shift in attitude toward the sorts of ideas the U.S. and Europe would like to see at the heart of the international system—not just toward democracy and the rule of law, but also toward regional agreements on human rights. Many developing countries have come to see the maintenance of stable democracies in their region as a bulwark against instability. In 2000, the African Union rejected the idea of nonintervention in favor of a concept it defined as “non-indifference”—a slightly vague formulation, to be sure, but one that leaves open the
possibility of intervening in the event of crimes against humanity. Since 1997, no government that has come to power through a coup has been allowed to participate in an African Union summit. The organization’s limitations may have been exposed when it was tasked with running the peacekeeping operation in Darfur. But in terms of the political philosophy, the shift has been marked.

In recent years, the Arab League has also sharply changed its approach to outside intervention, eagerly backing the U.S.-led operation in Libya and working energetically to encourage stronger measures against the Syrian regime in the face of opposition from China and Russia. Turkey, another important new swing state, joined forces with the Arab League in its efforts. Something similar has also been happening in South America, with Brazil in the lead. Mercosur, the regional grouping, has twice threatened coup plotters in Paraguay with expulsion, maintaining that only democracies can be members (although its criteria for democracy have been elastic enough to include Venezuela). In 2004, Brazil sent peacekeepers to Haiti under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which allows for the use of force. Across the developing world, there has been a steady erosion of support for the idea that national sovereignty should be defended at all costs. A political corner has been turned.

The real issue is not U.S. rhetoric: it is U.S. practice. Developing world democracies are not opposed to the idea of outside interference in human-rights disasters, but they are worried about the potential manipulation of these rules by the U.S. to justify the sort of behavior countries like India and Brazil consider to be bullying. Skepticism about American motives did not begin with the invasion of Iraq. But the way the war was conducted—the attempts to railroad the UN, the manipulated intelligence, the character assassinations of those who stood in its way—confirmed the very worst fears that many governments hold about the U.S. UN diplomats from developing countries still talk about the contempt for the institution that they felt they received from John Bolton, when he was George W. Bush’s ambassador to the UN. The Libya conflict in 2011 added to their mistrust. Like China and Russia, some of the governments were dismayed by the way the Libya operation in 2011 developed, when the U.S., U.K., and France quickly transformed UN approval for a humanitarian operation in the east of the country
into a military campaign to oust Muammar Qaddafi. “We never said it was OK to go for regime change,” one Indian diplomat told me. Many of the new swing powers agree on the need to respond to humanitarian crises, but they are loath to underwrite a new set of rules which could become a blank check for further U.S. unilateralism.

If the West wants to establish legitimacy for its new agenda of humanitarian activism, then it needs to find a way to overcome some of these reservations among the new swing states. As it happens, Brazil is the country that has offered up the most interesting olive branch. In late 2011, Dilma Rousseff’s government published a little-noticed document it called “Responsibility While Protecting.” The basic idea was to try and find a way to regulate and monitor foreign interventions that are approved by the UN. It would establish clearer rules for what sort of military behavior is permitted, and a monitoring mechanism to review interventions as they are conducted. For some U.S. officials, the Brazilians are more interested in grandstanding than in providing constructive leadership. Rousseff’s initiative was dismissed by many as the actions of a “spoiler” government with no interest in working with Washington. But in reality, it was a serious attempt to start a debate about ways to make Western intervention work. Brazil was offering itself as a mediator between the West and other sections of the developing world. This is a conversation the U.S. needs to engage in, for the balance of influence in these global debates will depend heavily on where the new swing states position themselves. If the U.S. cannot build a common understanding with the largest democracies in the world, it will be hard work to retain its position at the center of the conversation.

GREAT POWER BURDENS

For a country like South Sudan, which is the newest in the world and one of the very poorest, it probably helps a little to have a leader who is physically imposing and highly recognizable. At six foot four, with a bushy black beard, Salva Kiir towers over most of the other presidents and prime ministers he meets. He also stands out because of the black cowboy hat he always sports, whether addressing the United Nations or having coffee at the White House. His first ten-gallon Stetson was a
present from George W. Bush, who played an important role in South Sudan’s independence campaign, and Kiir liked it so much he bought a large collection for himself. It is tempting to speculate what the Chinese made of Kiir when he made his first trip to Beijing in 2007. If they thought of him then as a folkloric figure with his black cowboy hat, they certainly do not now. For Kiir’s 2007 visit turned out to be a groundbreaking moment in China’s relations with the rest of the world.