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TYPES OF OBJECTIVES IN HISTORICAL SYSTEMS



Among primitive tribes, distinction between collective interests of the political unit and private interests of its members is not always clear. Anthropological investigations of such groups as the Veddas, Australian aborigines, the Fuegians, and some North American Indians have revealed that, with the exception of common grazing rights, these people developed few collective interests that they had to achieve or protect in relations with other groups or tribes. At the same time, when one member of the collectivity was harmed in any way by outsiders, it became the collective duty of his own people to inflict revenge on the wrong­doer or his tribe. External objectives became more complex as tribal units achieved a higher level of civilization. Many groups became more sedentary and based their existence on a particular piece of territory that they had to defend or extend against others to survive. Other important collective objectives were access to, and rights over, water and communication routes. Independent political groups learned later the value of goods and slaves, which eventually become the objects of group conquest. Further economic and social development brought awareness of the needs or advantages of imperialism. In addition to plundering and robbing neighbors for goods and slaves, such groups as the Vikings, the early Anglo-Saxons, and the Danes systematically occupied and settled regions formerly held by militarily inferior peoples.

The promotion of value objectives through religious expansion or cul­ural imperialism is also typical of political units with concepts of collective interests. Drives for expansion in the Chou empire were often motivated by a

j desire to bring to the "barbarians" the benefits of Chinese culture. Forced con­version of the "heathen" to the Islamic religion was a major objective in the Saracen campaigns across North Africa and into Spain and France in the seventh

і and eighth centuries, and appeals to regain the Holy Land to destroy the Islamic "infidel" led to a series of crusades from Europe during the Middle Ages.

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In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Europe was composed of a complex of political units, including the largely symbolic Holy Roman Empire, dynastic states covering large and often noncontiguous areas, and hundreds of small dukedoms, religious states, and walled cities. The range of objectives among these units was equally wide. The Italian city-states were in almost con­stant warfare over issues of papal succession or objectives of territorial expansion and plunder. Conflicts also developed from the personal rivalries and ambitions of princes and were settled, like feuds, by private armies. International politics were typified by the conflicting private interests of dynasts and princes. And yet, higher purposes reflecting prevailing social and religious values were also present. The policies of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, King of Spain, ruler of the Austrian territories, the Netherlands, and various Italian holdings, were directed toward both extending his personal Hapsburg empire and creating a unified, Christian Europe. While he committed money and men to pursuit of his own glory and expansion of his personal wealth, he also led crusades against Islam in the Mediterranean area and Hungary.

The European state system in the eighteenth century is particularly inter­esting, because its members pursued in their external relations a combination of personal, dynastic, religious, commercial, and national objectives. Since mon-archs (with the exception of Frederick the Great) believed that they ruled by divine right, and attributed their sovereignty and absolutism to the Lord of Creation, they considered their own family interests their most important con­cerns. The state served primarily as a vehicle for protecting the wealth, security, and patrimony of a particular dynastic line.5 Among Louis XIV's main objectives, to which he committed the skills of his diplomats, were to place a Bourbon on the throne of Spain and to obtain his own election as Holy Roman Emperor. In the same period, the English kings were as much concerned with family interests in Hanover as with various threats to England posed by Spain or France. Some of the important diplomatic crises and wars between states in the eigh­teenth century arose from conflicting claims of private families.

Eighteenth-century states in Europe also pursued objectives that had little relationship to private dynastic interests—except that often they reflected on the prestige of monarchs. These included colonial ventures and expansion of trade and commerce. Statesmen such as Cardinal Fleury and Sir Robert Wal-pole exemplified those ministers who were increasingly organizing their policy objectives around other than religious or dynastic considerations. They had to respond to rising commercial interests and demands and thought in terms of national capabilities and national prestige. In addition to safeguarding dynastic objectives, these men quarreled over trade routes, rules governing navigation, strategic frontiers, colonies, and naval proficiency, all of which came to be re­garded—not only in the courts, but also among the developing middle classes— as vital collective interests to be secured, extended, or defended. The major

10.

5 See Walter L. Dorn, Competition for Empire, 1740-1763 (New York: Harper & Row, 1940),

128 Foreign-Policy Objectives

wars of the eighteenth century illustrate the rise of national objectives: The War of the Austrian Succession, as its name implies, concerned dynastic interests, but Frederick the Great's invasion of Silesia, trade rivalry, and the lure of colonial empire were important issues as well; and in the Seven Years' War (1757-1763), commercial and colonial objectives reflecting middle-class interests, as well as the British desire to obtain a monopoly of sea power, far outweighed dynastic concerns as factors in the conflict.

Even in our own era, political units seek to achieve a complete range of private and collective, concrete and value objectives. In some areas, state

w interests are still indistinguishable from dynastic interests. It is questionable, for example, whether the late Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza perceived that the interests of his country might be distinct from his private family interests. To him the primary objectives of foreign policy were to protect his ruling position and secure quantities of personal wealth and prestige. At the other extreme, we find governments that commit national resources to the expansion of messi­anic philosophies, regardless of what the effects will be on the personal lives, prestige, and fortunes of those who formulate these objectives. Between these extremes exist the vast majority of modern states, which seek to achieve collective • objectives of national security; welfare of citizens; access to trade routes, markets, and vital resources; and sometimes the territory of their neighbors. Given the wide range of objectives that exist today, then, how can they be classified?

We will employ a combination of three criteria: (1) the value placed 'X on the objective, or the extent to which policy makers commit themselves and their countries' resources to achieving a particular objective; (2) the time element placed on its achievement; and (3) the kinds of demands the objective imposes on other states in the system. From these we can construct categories of objectives , such as the following: (1) "core" values and interests, to which governments

\f і and nations commit their very existence and that must be preserved or extended at all times (achievement of these values or interests may or may not impose demands on others); (2) middle-range goals, which normally impose demands on several other states (commitments to their achievement are serious, and some time limits are usually attached to them); and (3) universal long-range goals, which seldom have definite time limits.6 In practice, statesmen rarely place the highest value on long-range goals and do not, consequently, commit many national capabilities or policies to their achievement—unless the goals are central to a political philosophy or ideology, in which case they may be considered "core" or middle-range interests. States that work actively toward

6 Arnold Wolfers has outlined an alternative scheme for classifying goals. He distinguishes between aspirations and genuine policy goals, which correspond roughly to the distinction between long-range goals and others of more immediate importance. Possession goals refer to the achievement of national values and needs, while milieu goals are conditions outside the nation-state itself that a state seeks to change. Wolfers also distinguishes between national goals and indirect goals, which correspond roughly to my concepts of "collective interests" and "private interests." See Arnold Wolfers, "The Goals of Foreign Policy," in his Discord and Collaboration: Essays on International Politics (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins Press, 1962), Chap. 5.

129 Foreign-Policy Objectives

achieving universal long-range goals usually make radical demands on all other units in the system and thus create great instability.

"CORE" INTERESTS AND VALUES

"Core" values and interests can be described as tho^e_Jandj_of_goals_for which most people are willing to make ultimate sacrifices. They are usually stated in the form of basic principles of foreign policy and become articles of faith that a society accepts uncritically.7 Such terms as "command of the sea," a "frontier on the Rhine," and the "Monroe Doctrine" suggest basic foreign interests or goals that at one time were held sacrosanct by entire communities.

"Core" interests and values are most frequently related to the self-pres­ervation of a political unit. These are short-range objectives, because other goals obviously cannot be achieved unless the political units pursuing them maintain their own existence. The exact definition of a "core" value or interest in any given country depends on the attitudes of those who make policy. There are, for example, many different interpretations of self-preservation. Some dis­agree over definitions of self—that is, what constitutes an integrated polity. Others will disagree equally on what policies contribute best to preservation. Some colonial regimes have been willing to grant independence to indigenous peoples voluntarily, whereas others have considered that overseas holdings con­stitute an integral part of the nation, which must be defended at all costs. Never­theless, most policy makers in our era assume that the most essential objective of any foreign policy is to ensure the sovereignty and independence of thej home territory and to perpetuate a particular political, social, and economic sys- j tern based on that territory.

Some governments place equally great value on controlling or defending neighboring territories, because these areas contain ethnically related popula­tions or assets such as a labor force and raw materials that can increase a state's capabilities, or because they believe that the major threat to their own territorial integrity might materialize through adjacent lands. Achievement of favorable strategic frontiers has been a traditional short-run policy objective to which states have been willing to commit great resources. Russians have traditionally attempted to dominate the areas between themselves and Western Europe, and the Soviets today are fully committed to the defense of Eastern Europe. They would probably react, as the Warsaw Treaty stipulates, to an attack on this territory as if it were an attack on the Soviet Union itself. The United States has similarly pledged through the NATO treaty to consider an attack on one of its European allies as an attack on itself. The objective of safeguarding Ameri-can security by defending Western Europe has persisted since 1949, despite changes in administration in Washington. There is, then, almost unanimous

t/

Modelski, A Theory of Foreign Policy, p. 86.

130 Foreign-Policy Objectives

agreement in the United States that the territorial integrity and independence j of the Western European countries constitute a "core" interest of the United States.

Israel is an example of a small country that has committed great resources to the achievement of frontiers that would provide both security and lands tradi-

* tionally considered to be part of the historical Jewish nation. To many Israelis, military control over the Golan Heights and occupation of the West Bank of the Jordan River constitute "core" interests that must be protected at all costs. The problem, of course, is that the West Bank lands are inhabited predominantly by Palestinians who consider that Israeli presence there is fundamentally incon­sistent with their own "core" interest—which is to create an independent Pales­tinian state. Where the essential interests of two political units overlap in such a fashion, it becomes extremely difficult to develop some sort of political settle­ment that is satisfactory to both sides.

After self-preservation and defense of strategically vital areas, another prominent "core" value or interest is ethnic, religious, or linguistic unity. Today, no less than in the great era of nationalism in the nineteenth century, the most legitimate bases of frontiers correspond to ethnic, language, or religious divi­sions. Territories carved up according to historical or strategic criteria, where ethnic groups are arbitrarily divided between sovereignties, are likely to become areas of conflict as neighboring states attempt to "liberate" their own kin from foreign rule. Irredentist movements, subversion, and sometimes racial warfare are often the products of frontiers that divide ethnic, language, or religious groups. In almost all areas where such arbitrary divisions occur, governments make reunification a major objective of foreign policies, and sometimes place such a high value upon it that they are willing to employ large-scale force to achieve it. The Kashmir wars, intermittent crises over a divided Germany and Berlin, Austria and Italy over the Tyrol, tensions between Kenya and Somalia and Somalia and Ethiopia, and the wars in Korea, Vietnam, and Cyprus have arisen since World War II essentially because one government attempted through threats, subversion, or outright military attack to defend or incorporate into its own territory ethnically related people living in neighboring states.

The demands that pursuit of these "core" values or interests require

of other actors in the system vary. States with well-established frontiers corre-

., sponding to ethnic divisions, which protect their territories and social orders

j through ordinary defense policies, are not likely to disturb even their immediate

neighbors. Those that seek more favorable strategic frontiers or ethnic unity

* normally do so at the expense of the "core" values and interests of their neigh­bors, and thus create dangerous conflicts.

Such conflicts may not always lead to violence or war, because interpreta­tions of "core" values or "vital interests" may change under different circum­stances. The British were willing for decades to fight against any internal or external assaults on their empire as if they were fighting for the city of London. But in 1945, the economic and military strains of maintaining the empire were

131 Foreign-Policy Objectives

so great that many British leaders recognized they could no longer consider the colonies as "core" interests to be preserved at all costs. In the 1950s, reunifi­cation was considered by many Germans as a "core" value. By the 1970s, it was seldom mentioned as a foreign-policy objective.

A bizarre interpretation of "core" values and interests was the view propounded by Lenin that the development of world revolution was more impor­tant than saving either his Bolshevik regime or the independence of the Russian nation.8 It was partly because of his exceptional commitment to world revolution that he was willing to concede to Germany in the Brest-Litovsk treaty almost one-quarter of Russia's traditional territory and one-half of its population. In this case, although the objective of world revolution was a middle-range goal if we are using the criterion of time, in terms of the value Lenin placed on its achievement it was a "core" interest. Lenin's successors have displayed quite different—and more traditional—attitudes, however, through their claims that the defense of Russian territory and the Soviet state, rather than promotion of revolution, is the first foreign-policy priority.9 Lenin's priorities were excep­tional; in most cases, policy makers explicitly state or reveal through their actions that the basic objective, for which any degree of sacrifice may be required, is defense of the home territory plus any other territory deemed necessary to self-preservation and perpetuation of a particular political, social, and economic order, or, as some call it, a "way of life."

 




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