The document discusses the concepts of détente, escalation, and quagmires during the Cold War. It notes that détente was a strategy used by the US to implement containment by engaging with the Soviets to manage competition and reduce tensions. However, it failed partly due to the US abandoning diplomacy while still seeking arms agreements. Escalation was seen as dangerous if uncontrolled, but could be used to pressure opponents, while quagmires resulted from overcommitting militarily to interventions and being unable to withdraw. Political decision-making, not the tools themselves, determines outcomes like escalation and quagmires.

1. December 8, 2011

2. Come up with several broad and
several narrow research questions
that might be generated from
today’s readings

3.  How do we understand the place and
role of particular foreign policy
instruments?
 What are the problems with such
instruments and are problems with
the instruments or with political
processes?
 How effective are various instruments?

4.  Détente is a strategy that must be seen as part of
an overall foreign policy approach rather than as
a stand alone strategy or foreign policy
instrument.
 In short, in the US context it was another way of
implement an overall strategy of containment:
◦ A different approach than the massive retaliation/low
resources and flexible responses/high resources
interpretations of containment
◦ Thus an updated way of implementing containment
within a particular context
◦ Not a substitute for or alternative to containment

5.  Détente is a way of maintaining a particular
balance of power arrangement. In the 1970s
it meant
◦ Ensuring that the Soviets did not dominate more
than one of the 5 global geo-strategic centers
◦ Redefining “opponents” to disregard ideology– thus
allowing PRC to move from an opponent to a
partner
◦ Engage Soviets to manage competition and identify
common interests (thus in this understanding,
containment and engagement are not rival
strategies, but rather engagement can be an
instrument of containment).

6.  Achievement of important arms control
agreements
 Easing of tensions in Europe, particularly with
regard to Berlin (a potential flashpoint for
decades)
 Overall reduction of Soviet power and
growing dependence of the Soviets on
Western economies
 Refocus of US policy beyond obsession with
Vietnam

7.  Soviets moved ahead in strategic and
conventional weaponry
 Tightening of internal controls within the
Soviet bloc
 Continued Soviet efforts at fostering
instability in the Third World
 Soviet violation of agreements, leading to a
suspicion that they would not honor
agreements
 Invasion of Afghanistan

8. Gaddis softens this judgment by arguing that these
failures do not reflect on the overall goals of
détente as a form of containment. Rather, if
these represent failures, they must be attributed
to factors other than the strategy itself:
 Failure to carry through with linkage by
consistently cultivating interests and conveying
clear understanding to Soviets as to US strategic
interests.
If use carrots and sticks, must use them
consistently and to guide partner to actions you
want them to take. This consistency was
undermined by Congressional interference in
foreign policy formation– division of authority.

9.  Failure of Congress to keep pace with regard to
spending on strategic and conventional weapons
 Inability of both important officials and of the
public to understand that international order
must come first, then justice. This meant that
there was pressure to emphasize human rights
over strategic interests, and also lead to Nixon
mistakenly agreeing to the Helsinki Accords (a
set of commitments that the Soviets were not
likely to keep, thus undermining the strategy of
negotiation and détente in general).

10.  Returned to an unlimited resources strategy
without a plan for generating those resources
(is dubious of supply side economics)
 Abandoned diplomacy as a strategy while still
seeking to negotiate arms control
agreements– inconsistency
 Allowed support for containment and nuclear
deterrence to erode by taking a casual
attitude towards nuclear war.

11.  Inability to learn from the past with regard to
strategic problems– each administration must learn
from scratch—need professional and permanent NSC
staff and counsels to President and Sec of State
 Inability to segregate strategic policy from politics in
general– need bipartisanship in foreign policy and a
revised method for choosing presidential candidates
 Inability to relate national security issues and
economic burdens they entail with national economic
strategy
 Inability to define what it is that is to be contained.
 Inability to make proper use of allies and friends.
 Divided decision-making authority

12. Foreign aid has been used as a tool of
democracy promotion in part because it is
thought that aid may be effective in particular
areas:
 Technical aid to strengthen legislatures and
judicial bodies as checks on executives
 Conditionality: aid not provided unless
particular policies related to democratization
are implemented
 Boost incomes and education, both of which
are positively related to democracy

13.  USAID, in noting the increase in democracies
from 1980 to 1995, notes that it provided aid to
36 of the 57 new democracies
 However, there are theoretical counter-
arguments that hold that aid may be detrimental
to democratization:
◦ Aid strengthens governments at the expense of the
private sector (Friedman)
◦ Aid weakens government accountability, just as does oil
and other mineral wealth, by giving the government an
unaccountable source of income. Without aid,
governments may have to seek agreement to be funded
through taxes (Tilly, North). Aid makes governments
accountable to donors, not citizens.

14.  Aid may strengthen executives at the expense
of legislators, particularly through
conditionality.
 Aid might make corruption worse by
diversion of funds into private accounts.

15. When controlling for other factors and looking
at aid given to countries in general, aid does
not constitute a statistically significant
element in increasing the democratic
standing of countries when measured by
standard ratings.

16. Promotion of democracy is often cited as a
reason for particular military interventions.
However, this rationale may be contrary to
democratic peace theory (democracies are
supposed to be less militaristic than non-
democracies) and to democratic theory (is it
consistent to impose a democracy on another
country?)
If this is the case, why would the US intervene
militarily to promote democracy?
Is military intervention an effective way of
promoting democracy?

17.  While democratic peace theory argues that
democracies are more peaceful than non-
democracies, empirically this holds true only for
relations among democracies.
 Democracies are much more belligerent toward
non-democracies and may have an incentive to
intervene militarily to convert authoritarian
governments to democracies in the interest of
promoting a future peace.
 The literature on democracy promotion lists a
variety of non-military means by which
democracy is promoted, but not military means.
Also concludes that democracy is difficult to
create and sustain and often depends on a
complex mix of internal and external factors.

18.  A separate literature on successful military
interventions with regard to the US stresses the
importance of narrow, well-defined goals,
overwhelming use of force and the need to
accomplish the goal quickly and withdraw.
 These may not be conducive to democracy
promotion:
◦ Narrow goals are often military rather than broadly
political
◦ Overwhelming use of force creates a large footprint and
many civilian and military casualties, making the US (as a
democracy) appear brutal and uncaring
◦ Quick departure is not conducive to necessary nation
and institution building.

19.  Analyze data to determin if coutnries subject
to US miltiary intervention experienced
expansion/contraction of democratic
practice, as measure by standard benchmarks
 Compare these to countries that did not
experience intervention
 Examine important factors surrounding
intervention, including stated objectives
 Determine when such interventions are
effective and when they are not

20.  For countries which did experience US military
intervention, the majority did not experience
change within a 3 year window, though some
regressed and some advanced in terms of
democratic practice.
 The same holds generally true of countries that
did not experience US military intervention.
 The only statistically significant factor in terms of
separating interventions that resulted in
democratic progress and those that did not is a
stated goal of promoting democracy through the
intervention.

21. During the Cold War, both NATO and its
constituent countries were involved in various
types of military planning. Part of that planning
came to dominated by the concepts of escalation
and quagmires:
 Escalation was seen as something that had to be
controlled. On the one hand, escalation was part
of deterrence against the Soviets and as a way of
dealing with others. The measured use of power
would help keep the peace in Europe and keep
the alliance together.
 But uncontrolled escalation was seen as
dangerous as leading to wider wars and possible
nuclear exchanges.

22. Quagmires were seen as the result of
interventions in former colonies and Third
World countries, in which the investment of
an initial amount of military resources would
result, over time, to continued investment in
the belief that the added increment would
lead to victory and vindicate all the previous
investments.
Not to invest anew, by this logic, was to regard
previous investments as wasted, with no
chance of redemption.

23.  In both of these cases, it was thought that it was the
logic of military intervention and action that was at
the heart of these dangers.
 Escalation: factors
◦ Tit for tat actions: actions followed by reactions, followed
by new reactions, all of which go up the scale of force and
violence
◦ Miscalculation: an initial misjudgment or mistake leads to
wider war due to automated responses
 However, it was also thought that escalation would be
a way of getting an opponent to back to or concede
without engaging in an all out war– incremental
additions of force would lead to a breaking point in
an economical fashion. Most important test case in
Vietnam, in which strategy was fashioned after an
interpretation (probably wrong) of Cuban Missile
Crisis as an example of controlled escallation.

24.  Oversized commitment to goal
 Inability to meet commitment decisively
through military means and political/public
commitment
 Thus the doling out of coercive measures in
small packages meant to be politically
palatable and to rescue the effort by
supplying just enough additional resources to
secure victory, though this occurs over an
over again as victory remains elusive.

25. Not that military intervention locks a country into a
predetermined and automatic series of steps that
lead to escalation and/or quagmire, but that
what happens militarily is a matter of political
decisionmaking.
Escalation and quagmires happen because a
political system is unable to balance competing
needs to satisfy public opinion and political goals
and to deal with military reality and strategic
goals.
Thus understanding that the military is a tool as
with any other in that its use is determined by
those who use it, not its nature. The same would
be true of various kinds of foreign aid, or
sanctions as a tool, etc.