Relearning the Art of Nation State Diplomacy.

AuthorAnderson, Mike
PositionEssay

American foreign policy is complex, and its application by diplomats and military practitioners is challenging in the diverse nature of the current environment. Military and diplomatic advisors during the post-9/11 period have concentrated on non-state threats, conditioning them to resort quickly to military options. In the face of emerging state competitors such as the Russian Federation and People's Republic of China, a broader range of options beyond only military force is required. This generation of policy advisors must unlearn some of what they have learned over the course of the last fifteen years of conflict, as they shift from dealing with non-state actors to addressing the resurgence of near-peer statecraft based on national security threats. These threats have been long ignored during the war on terror. The diplomatic craft represented during the Cold War must be embraced by both the military and diplomatic personnel in practice, and emphasized by the uniformed armed forces and professional diplomatic advisors to policy and decision makers.

Post 9/11 the United States and its allies returned to the hard lessons, costliness, and demands of effective counterterrorism and counterinsurgency techniques gained from experiences fighting counterinsurgencies in the Philippines, Malaya, and Vietnam in both the 19th and 20th centuries. However, that swing of the pendulum bred a generation of practitioners who relied too much on military force alone; both military and diplomats increased the focus on countering insurgency and terrorism, at the expense of more traditional state-to-state diplomacy. While Obama's second term saw a return to a stronger focus on state-to-state competitors, which is continued to the present day, this pivot largely resulted in more military exercises and deployments. Unfortunately, this shift has come at the expense of degrading future ability to effectively address insurgency, terrorism, and irregular warfare, returning to over-reliance on small, specialized military formations, use of local forces, and military sales with ineffectively controlled aid in the Middle East and African regions. The result has been a swinging pendulum of policies, instead of the balanced approach needed in the complex global environment.

Meanwhile, opponent nation-states such as Russia and China took advantage of the American focus on counterterrorism and counterinsurgency warfare in the fight against violent extremist groups. Russia seized on opportunities provided by the Olympics, our engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan, war-weariness, and political controversies that directed media attention elsewhere. Firstly, Russia took advantage of the U.S. shifts in manpower, budget, and policy towards crises in the Middle East to invade Georgia during the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics. Before the world even fully reacted to Russia's intervention in Georgia, the Russians secured South Ossetia and Abkhazia. In doing so they achieved significant policy goals, both against Georgia specifically and NATO as a whole, as Georgia had actively courted NATO membership. (i) This issue of territorial sovereignty of the so-called "breakaway republics" is still unresolved, though the violence has subsided.

Secondly, the next opportunity was during the 2012 Winter Olympics in Russia. Even as the games came to a close on 23 February...

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