The Danger Of US Giving Friendly Countries False Encouragement  

The reaction from some of Trump’s advisers to criticism of the Taiwan call isn’t reassuring:

“It was a message in the sense that Donald Trump is not necessarily going to be told what he can or can’t do because a foreign leader says so. That’s exactly the kind of thing that millions of Americans detest about Washington,” said Mr. Yates, who currently is visiting Taiwan for meetings with senior officials.

“If it’s going to cause some pain, then so be it [bold mine-DL],” he said.

It is typical for hawks to be unconcerned about the consequences of their preferred actions, but this response is nonetheless remarkable. The problem here is that the pain that may be caused won’t be felt by Beijing, but by Taiwan. Advocates for “tougher” policies toward other states are often quite willing to put the well-being of the countries they want to “support” at greater risk in order to score points and poke a rival in the eye. When it comes time to pay the price for our posturing at the expense of the smaller country, the same hawks that helped bring on the crisis are never called to account for what they did. In practice, this usually means that the U.S. either hangs the other country out to dry or finds itself having to back up an increased commitment that most Americans never agreed to make. The one is embarrassing, and the other is dangerous.

The Bush administration gave Georgia many reasons to believe that it would come to their defence in a conflict for several years, and those signals were strong enough that they encouraged the then-president Saakashvili to escalate a conflict in 2008 that Georgia couldn’t win on the wrong assumption that the U.S. would take their side. Bush had succeeded in provoking Russia and giving false encouragement to Georgia, both of which worked to the detriment of the latter. In the end, the “pro-Georgian” hawks helped set up Georgia for disaster.

It often seems to be the case that another country’s most vocal and enthusiastic boosters here at home have the worst ideas for what U.S. policy towards that country ought to be. One reason for this may be that some of the boosters see the other country as nothing more than a piece to be moved in opposition to some other state, and so don’t care what effect their policy will have on them. Another may be that they actually believe that more hard-line and confrontational policies will make the opposing state more cooperative, and so genuinely can’t see the danger they’re courting. Another may be that they identify U.S. interests so closely with the preferences of the local government that they can’t see the pitfalls. Whatever the reason, they end up encouraging the other government to take risks that they would not have taken on their own, or they indulge the other government in self-destructive behaviour that a wiser friend would urge them to stop.

Hawks often overreach and give rhetorical encouragement to other governments that they can’t or won’t follow through on later, and that just sets up the other government for a fall and prompts inevitable accusations that the U.S. “abandoned” them. The wiser course is to avoid getting overly attached to a friendly country or would-be client. That way, we can distinguish between our interests and theirs, and we will be able to know when to refrain from encouraging them when doing so would do them more harm than good.

This piece was first published on The American Conservative and has been republished here with permission.