Foreign Affairs Contributes To The Turbulence Of Our Time

A critical examination of the narrative pushed by the most hawkish in foreign policy

Introduction

Foreign Affairs is considered by many to be the premiere source of international relations thinking in the United States. It has a dominant thesis within its articles, that becomes predictable after a time: China is a security threat, so is Russia; in fact, any challenge to unquestioned American supremacy is a threat. This era has been brought on from decades of cold-war era thinking that gave way to the security-era in the post Twin-Tower world. In this paper that will critically examine the lens Foreign Affairs views the world, I will challenge their worldview, noting that many of their views are misplaced, hypocritical, and add to the turbulence of our time. 

I will center my focus on a recent piece, written by Tong Zhao, an international relations scholar and contributor to Foreign Affairs. In this piece, he speaks of the Chinese elite, their scholars, and their think-tank members as living within an echo chamber created by Xi Jinping. I will state that this is a hypocritical analysis coming from Foreign Affairs, as the narrative of Foreign Affairs is precisely what Zhao is criticizing from the Chinese. The very nature of “hawkish” policy, as Zhao accuses China of orchestrating, is being peddled by the voices of the hegemon, as they glare at a potential competitor. 

The “Echo Chamber”

The argument within this article is that China has, under President Xi Jinping, created an “Echo Chamber” where the rhetoric is progressively moving toward a conflict over Taiwan. Tong Zhao’s argument centers on the premise that Xi JinPing demands absolute loyalty, and this demand has created an environment where ideas are not pit against one-another, but are instead progressively moving in the manner that Xi prefers. The argument centers on the fact that Xi is willing to take on the China-Taiwan dilemma, whereas his predecessors were willing to leave it to future leaders. Zhao writes: 

Public opinion is shaped by only the most hawkish voices: media outlets now censor anyone who expresses skepticism about a military solution to the Taiwan issue, whereas “patriotic” voices are free to express themselves, even if they promote excessively violent means to advance unification. 

The people who are promoting these arguments come from the country’s universities, think tanks, and political elites; in short, existing in mainstream sources but expressing skepticism for the armed reunification of Taiwan is a difficult way to make a living. Recommendations from these elites must outdo one another, with solutions being built around more aggressive responses. In short, the funnel of information is moving down a one-way lane toward an aggressive solution to resolving the conflict. 

The Echo Chamber of Foreign Affairs

The above paragraphs are a summary of the main points from Zhao’s article. It is difficult to disagree with his assumptions within the framework of his essay, but to dissect and critique his thesis we must deconstruct it further. 

Taiwan has always been a sore spot for the Chinese, and they have vowed that it will be reunified with China. They vehemently reject Taiwan’s independence, and have expressed their outrage with high level diplomats such as Nancy Pelosi visiting the Island. In addition to diplomatic visits, the United States provides billions in military aid to Taiwan, with the first $345 million in weapons out of the $1 billion allotment moving to the island in July. 

Why are these moves problematic? Zhao believes it is because of some “mistaken” beliefs by the Chinese about Taiwan, that the Russians also “mistakenly” believed about Ukraine. The mistake, he notes, is that President Xi’s dislike for Taiwan and his more aggressive policy toward reunification is because he “mistakenly” believes that the United States is using Taiwan as a means to weaken China. This “mistake,” he mentions, is the same “mistaken” perspective that Vladimir Putin held over Ukraine. There was no need to be afraid of the massive deployments of troops and weapons in either case–unless of course those weapons are pointed at you, in your hemisphere. The hawks cannot see when they, themselves, support hawkish policy. 

This is where the argument of Zhao begins to fall apart, and where hypocrisy can be identified. This debate between John Mearsheimer and Carl Bildt challenges the assertion that the lethal weapons from the west are non-threatening (an oxy-moron in itself). The United States, Mearsheimer notes, would never allow a powerful military to exist within its hemisphere. In fact, when Chinese and Russian naval ships patrolled together near Alaska, they were met with destroyers and fighter jets. It is difficult for those in the United States to recognize that having a powerful military on its doorstep can be intimidating, particularly considering the histories of China and Russia. 

Both China and Russia have experienced horrors beyond imagination in the last century. These horrors include notable events like the invasion of China by Imperial Japan during World War II, killing about 3.75 million soldiers and over 18 million civilians. The Soviet Union lost another 27 million, including over 10 million civilians. Rewind a further century and we can see further hesitation for why the Chinese would resist pure trust with the Americans and Europeans. The Opium wars, fought through two conflicts that began in 1839 and 1856 respectively, allowed westerners to demonstrate what they do when their demands are not met. The Chinese, a prospering empire under the Qing dynasty, had a wide variety of goods much desired by the west. When the west (mainly Great Britain and the United States) had nothing of want to the Chinese, they began to smuggle opium as a way to gain Chinese goods. The opium trade had horrible consequences for China, and their attempts to curb the trade led to a forceful response from western navies. A series of “treaties” opening China to the west allegedly ended these wars, but a better definition for it may have been a rough Chinese introduction to “gun boat diplomacy.” 

If we consider history, there was not a tremendous period of peace after the World Wars, but the Cold War, the war on terror which blended countries together into a sea of possible terrorists, and now a new cold war. I disagree with assertions that there was a “peace” offered by the west, because we have been perpetually in costly, unnecessary wars for decades. If we consider history in its entirety, we cannot dismiss the Russians and Chinese as merely “mistaken” that western militaries on their doorsteps are a possible threat. This brings us to the hypocrisy of Foreign Affairs. 

The Hypocrisy of Foreign Affairs

Zhang Thao, in his analysis of the Chinese elite, ended up accurately describing the environment created by Foreign Affairs. In this environment, the only perspectives that are allowed to exist are those that are hawkish in nature. Consider this article for a moment, The Treacherous Path to a Better Russia, which opens with a discussion that perhaps Russia will never have better relations with the West as long as Putin is in power. Perhaps, then, the only way forward will be when he is ousted. If we read on, the article imagines different ways for Putin to be ousted from power, including death, and what Russia will look like after Putin. Such a perspective is entirely hawkish, and has been in place in foreign affairs and for its contributors since prior to the invasion in 2022. 

“American power still casts a large shadow across the globe,” points out authors Stephen Brooks and William Wohforth. This power, they note, is still great, far beyond China’s and is an assured way for peace, because Americans control the air, sea, and space. Because their power is still so great, China can, at best, be a regional power, and not a global one. And here we get to a main thesis of Foreign Affairs as a whole. Their main premise is that the United States, at the lead of the western European countries and a few others, should be at the helm of a resistance-less international world order. This order, their premise repeats time and time again, is the best chance for peace–just look at the world wars!

There is much room for disagreement, both with the hawkish nature of this argument, along with the idea that US military dominance is the way to the safest world. The geopolitical realities of Europe during the world wars, with multiple empires on the same continent, led to struggles that were enormous in scope, long before the “Great War.” It was these same geopolitical realities that saw the independent United States prosper in the “new world,” because other great nations across the sea had geopolitical strife close to home, landlocked and surrounded by rivals. The United States, from its island sanctuary, was free to grow and project power when necessary. But this is not where the rising powers are today. It is not as though China, the United States, and Russia are land-locked, pointing their weapons at one-another. There are oceans between the west and east, where there does not need to be weapons that can threaten the other. In this new world, it is not the presence of a powerful US navy that makes peace, but the freedom for the great powers to rise economically and not need to worry about “containment” strategies bent on moving their countries in backwards directions. 

Where Does Foreign Affairs Tie Into This?

The concluding recommendations from Zhao are a soft-core way of indicating future turbulence ahead. The ”echo chamber” that China is in cannot only be met with the military, he notes. Instead, the west must “welcome China’s contributions” to the world–as if China may play on the global stage only with such permission. How will China’s future look, with the dominant narratives being echoed by the likes of Foreign Affairs? They will have to respond to a narrative like these ones: “The Unpredictable Dictators,” “Xi’s Security Obsession,” “The Case for a Hard Break With China.” They will not respond politely to being treated as second-rate–not anymore– and will likely push toward decoupling, seeking an international system without US involvement. 

Foreign Affairs does not just push a righteous narrative though, but a hypocritical one. They lament about China and Xi Jinping being “security obsessed,” while insisting that there is no budget the US can conjure that will provide enough for its military. They accuse others of being hawkish, while being the voice of the most hawkish figures in American foreign policy. They are tied to a cold-war era thinking–the era many of their writers got their start in–that geopolitical competition knows no bounds, and strategy is the lens we must view the world through. It is fundamental, for the security of the United States and the greater world, that we renounce this mindset, end this hypocrisy, and ensure that this modern journey of ours ends without too much more turbulence.