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Mike Mazarr Profile picture
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1 Dec, 4 tweets, 1 min read
Theoretical / conceptual arguments about the role of US global engagement don't capture the real texture of this issue. Interviewed loads of US officials, FSOs, + military officers who confirm that these ties *do* convey significant influence ...
defensepriorities.org/explainers/pha…
... in ways that aren't always apparent outside the negotiating room, or may take years to develop, but can be critical. Looking for unqualified influence judges US global role by the wrong criterion; this essay misses many aspects of these rich + complex relationships
For example: "Yet on issue after issue, the South Korean government has butted heads with Washington" is a far too simple + misleading summary of the US-ROK relationship, especially through ROK admins of striking different political stripes. Allies + partners have ...
... political, strategic + economic constraints, too. These relationships will always be imperfect: Each side will get only part of what it wants. The issue is whether the sum total benefits US interests including shoring up int'l norms. In many cases, the answer is clearly yes

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Mike Mazarr Profile picture
4 Dec
This may be true. But increasingly US policy toward Russia and Iran, *at least publicly* seems to be, "we refuse to take your interests seriously and claim the right to pursue our favored norms as we wish. But we demand that you play by the rules of the road we have laid down"
An unqualified, normative interpretation of the rules-based order worked from 1990 to maybe 2007-8. Now we need engaged, order-seeking statecraft: Not retrenchment, not abandoning the idea of a rule-based order, but being willing to qualify + condition norms on the edges
The idea that allowing any exceptions will produce a cascade of violations + collapse of the norm doesn't match historical experience. Plus, the US has claimed for itself many exceptions we seek to deny others, ranging from controlling foreign forces in Cuba to invading Iraq
Read 9 tweets
Mike Mazarr Profile picture
30 Nov
Just another reminder that this is basically the same strategic norm the US claimed re: Cuba and enforced in the missile crisis + later. SecState Vance in 1979 about just the infamous Soviet brigade in Cuba: "the presence of this unit runs counter to long‐held American policies"
Remember, too, that in the resolution of the crisis, in agreeing to (private) assurances to w/draw missiles from Turkey, the US explicitly affirmed the validity of this notion of equivalence: It is destabilizing for a great power to deploy certain weapons too close to its rival
I know that the debate over what Russia was + was not promised re: NATO enlargement still rages. Persuasive arguments on both sides, tho my best reading of the evidence = that Russia has a decent case to feel at least slightly misled. But ...
rferl.org/a/nato-expansi…
Read 6 tweets
Mike Mazarr Profile picture
30 Nov
A fascinating and visually stimulating summary of several Taiwan scenarios. But it reinforces a lesson of every unclas/strategic-level game or TTX I have ever participated in: I don't see how the PRC makes unqualified aggression work
reuters.com/investigates/s… via @SpecialReports
Every time I've seen this played out (politically + strategically, not tactically), there comes a point where those who'd prefer to hedge (Japan, EU, etc) become enraged by Beijing's aggression and decide they have no choice but to respond more decisively--whatever that means
They do that in large measure not because of any generic commitment to norms or alliances (though those are real considerations). They do it because *their* interests become directly threatened, and their red lines get crossed
Read 9 tweets
Mike Mazarr Profile picture
29 Nov
Very happy to (finally) highlight the release of this study. The idea, given intensifying US-RU/US-CH rivalry, was to ask what factors tend to stabilize such competitions and keep them from running out of control. A few major findings [THREAD]:
rand.org/pubs/research_…
2/ We reviewed literature on stability, escalation, and rivalry, and developed principles of stability in great power rivalries. We tested these in a number of historical cases + applied the resulting framework to current US-China and US-Russia contests
3/ Those current-day applications are a little dated--it took a while to get this report out. But we believe the basic conclusions remain valid, and that the trajectory we laid out has roughly continued (though has been mitigated in some cases, eg US Russia diplomacy)
Read 10 tweets
Mike Mazarr Profile picture
28 Nov
This is *exactly* the problem with an excessively normative conception of foreign policy. When "wrongdoers" don't accept our generous offers, there's no middle ground of statecraft. We refuse to deal w/them as legitimate states and default to implied regime change strategies ...
... which stretch on for decades as we watch the targets of our ire do all manner of nasty things (eg get 60+ nukes, as w/DPRK). These regimes will eventually change. But in the meantime we had better be willing to undertake diplomacy + accept sometimes rotten bargains
It is entirely possibly to marry a Kennan-esque long-term expectation of systemic victory with a powerful interim willingness to engage w/autocratic troublemakers. We keep seeing diplomatic compromise as a moral failure when in fact it is the essential support-system ...
Read 4 tweets
Mike Mazarr Profile picture
23 Oct
A powerful story in @nybooks about the human effects of waging war. It is surely true that Taliban takeover threatens many bad outcomes. It is *also* true that persistent war imposed tremendous suffering in ways not often captured by the US media ...
nybooks.com/daily/2021/10/…
2/ How easy it was for us to fall into thinking of an ongoing stalemate as "stability." Preserving that stalemate required airstrikes, raids, empowering local despots. It killed and maimed innocents, destroyed families and villages, drove many into the arms of the Taliban
3/ "The US will be remembered for enabling ... progress in women’s rights, an independent media and other freedoms." But in rural areas, "the main battlegrounds of America’s longest war, many Afghans view the US primarily through the prism of conflict, brutality and death"
Read 5 tweets

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