James E. Goodby participated Max Jakobson -seminar in Helsinki 3th December 2013.
Transatlantic Relations in an Era of Global Change
I want to thank the audience for being here for a discussion of the major issues before us. I also want to compliment the National Defence Courses program for what they do: it is one of the most important things going on in Finland. I wish we had something like it in the United States.
It is fitting that the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the National Defense Course Association have organized this international seminar to honor Max Jakobson. I’d hope to see something like this become an annual event. Max Jakobson was one of the main conceptual architects and exponents of post-World War II Finnish foreign policy. I can testify that his influence was felt around the world. I read his book about the diplomacy of the Winter War long before I ever thought of coming to Finland. I am proud to have been his friend.
Among my many fond memories of my time here is a visit by George Kennan, who came to delve into the archives of the imperial Russian depository library in connection with a book he was writing. I asked him when he arrived at the residence to stay with us if he wanted me to organize some social events. But he wanted only to talk with his old friend Max Jakobson. The three of us met for lunch at a downtown Helsinki restaurant and I listened in on two creative minds interacting, searching for underlying trends in the international environment as it existed at that time. I often wonder what they would say to each other today. They probably would be discussing Ukraine. But my guess is that they would also be talking about the transformation in international relations caused by globalization and the new information technologies. After all, it was Max Jakobson who wrote years ago that the division of Europe would not be ended through the barrel of a gun, but through the microchip. He was on to the ability of technology to change society very early.
I lived here as American ambassador in 1980 and 1981, well before diplomats and scholars, aside from George Kennan and Max Jakobson, were talking about the end of the Cold War. In fact, we were passing through a severe crisis resulting from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979. President Carter, who had appointed me to be his ambassador to Finland, wanted a mass boycott of the upcoming 1980 Olympics in Moscow as a protest against the invasion. I raised the subject with President Kekkonen. In fact I mentioned to him the first time I met him, when I presented my credentials to him in April 1980. You know the result. I wonder if we are coming full circle on that issue in the light of recent events.
While I was here our hostage crisis with Iran was in full swing. The disastrous US rescue mission took place in 1980. The hostages were released in January 1981 at the very moment when President Reagan took office and I had the embassy’s largest American flag raised to honor the return to freedom of my friends and colleagues in Tehran. The early 1980s were called ”the danger years” by some historians. And the years since then have not been very peaceful. They have been quite turbulent, in fact.
In 1991, the Soviet Union broke up into its constituent republics and also in 1991, Yugoslavia erupted in a vicious war. September 11, 2001 saw over 3,000 people killed in a terrorist attack in New York City and Washington, more than were killed at Pearl Harbor in 1941, which led to American entry into World War II. The 9/11 attack led to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. The war in Afghanistan has now become America’s longest war.
The great economic recession, whose effects still persist on both sides of the Atlantic, began in 2008. Its negative and divisive repercussions are still being felt in the relationships between European nations and the United States.
I mention these events because, arguably, they represent the kinds of issues nations can expect and will have to deal with in this era of global systemic change. Each had a profound impact on transatlantic relations. All our nations have to plan for contingencies like these. Max Jakobson foresaw the effects of fragmentation on global and national governance back in the 1980s. It seems that fragmentation, or disintegration, is an inevitable result of globalization. The concurrent empowerment of individuals and the rise of social media may be one of the reasons. Certainly new technologies have accelerated the pace of change. In any case, the process of creating new forms of governance continues unabated, in a more or less haphazard fashion. When a new international system is emerging, there is bound to be conflict and turbulence. Much of this can be handled through diplomacy and economics, but force may have to figure in some of them. The most salient structural change that nations are trying to inject into the process is an emphasis on regionalism. The Nordic Defense Cooperation process is a very constructive example of this.
Thinking of systemic change, I read recently a document published by the US National Intelligence Council. It is called ”Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds” and is the latest in a series of reports on global trends that the Council produces every few years. I would like to quote some passages from it. The first is this:
”The empowerment of individuals and diffusion of power among states and from states to informal networks will have a dramatic impact, largely reversing the historic rise of the West since 1750, restoring Asia’s weight in the global economy, and ushering in a new era of ´democratization’ at the international and domestic level.”
That word ”democratization” is in quotation marks because it refers to individual empowerment resulting from technological advances. The report underscores that transatlantic relations would have a very large component of European economic and political input if certain eminently achievable developments occur, some of which were just mentioned by Minister Bildt. And it speaks about Europe’s areas of strategic interests: the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Central Asia.
One of the great game changers in any prediction has to be the role played in the future by the United States in Europe and elsewhere in the world. My own sense is that despite the ”pivot to Asia,” much talk about ”drifting apart,” and some libertarian arguments favoring US withdrawal from foreign engagements, the United States will remain heavily engaged in transatlantic affairs, perhaps more than you want! I think history and culture, as well as fundamental national interests support this thesis.
In a book I wrote over a decade ago with two friends, Petrus Buwalda, a senior Dutch diplomat, and Dmitri Trenin, now director of the Carnegie Moscow Center and a prolific writer on Russian security issues we depicted a Euroatlantic security community. This book, published in 2002, was entitled A Strategy for Stable Peace: Toward a Euroatlantic Security
Community.
The model of transatlantic relations that Buwalda, Trenin, and I thought could emerge was based on our reading of the situation at the time and so we gave a lot of weight to Russia’s evident westward tendencies and also to the deeper integration of the EU that then seemed likely. We thought that three centers of gravity could dominate a Euroatlantic security community: ”A triad -- the European Union, Russia, and the United States.”
Speaking today, at the end of 2013, it is clear that developments we thought could happen have not, and that a shared vision has not yet been achieved within this triad. In fact, there seems to have been some retrograde movement. Also China looms much larger today than it did a decade ago when we wrote our book. We saw China then as a major factor on the global scene but we had the sense that relations with China would be qualitatively different from relations that might be possible within what we called the extended European system, including Russia.
Well, things have changed, and today, one would have to think about a grouping that included China, as well as North America, Russia, and the EU. And if that sounds fanciful and even bizarre, consider that this was the group that presided over the dealings with Iran regarding its nuclear program.
At this point, I cannot refrain from quoting the old story about the student who criticized his professor for voicing ideas out of tune with reality. ”So much the worse for reality,” replied the professor.
The reality is that ideas about security mechanisms that would include Russia, the United States, and the European nations in a common security space have been discussed for the last two decades, or more, but have gone nowhere. A very promising set of suggestions for improving mutual security throughout the region, I am very pleased to note, was published recently by Ambassador Ischinger and three distinguished colleagues, former British Defense Minister Des Browne, former Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, and former US Senator Sam Nunn. The report was entitled Building Mutual Security in the Euro-Atlantic Region. One of its key proposals was the establishment of a new Euro-Atlantic Security Forum to promote core security interests throughout the region.
I had hoped at one time that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
might be the basis for a Euroatlantic security community and while it has not developed in that direction, it should have a major role in the ”soft power” universe, including the monitoring of elections. The retiring American ambassador to NATO in his farewell speech last June said that NATO is more than a collective defense alliance. It is also, he said, a cooperative security organization, and I would add that it has become a modern-day Concert of Europe. So it can and should contribute to mutual security in the Euroatlantic region.
The third Eastern Partnership Summit in Vilnius, which Minister Bildt has referred to, as I saw it, could have been another important step in the direction of a Euroatlantic security community, not a way of dividing Russia from the West. Foreign Minister Carl Bildt deserves much credit and our deep thanks for the Eastern Partnership initiative. He also was absolutely right when he and the Polish foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, wrote not long ago that ”... for the Eastern Partnership to deliver in full... we need a stronger commitment from our partner countries to common values... Real transformation will only happen in countries that decide in favor of change.”
And where leaders of these countries have the courage and the vision to accept changes that their people clearly want, I would add.
The global economy is certainly becoming more integrated and scholars have foreseen a ”global society”. But my guess is that the road to a global society is going to pass through regional institutions rather than the existing global organizations. That seems to be the view of many governments, judging by their efforts to negotiate new regional free trade zones. The down side of this approach is that it can be misused to promote antagonistic blocs and this is a risk that needs to be considered.
I should emphasize that I believe the sense of being part of a nation, with all that means in terms of culture, language, history, and common values, will remain a powerful force in international relations. I am not denying that. What I am saying is that the governments of nation-states have to adapt to the rapidly changing circumstances in which they find themselves, where they no longer enjoy a monopoly over many aspects of what has been seen by them as elements of state power. That challenge to centuries of ingrained Realpolitik was one of the pioneering innovations of the Helsinki Final Act, which our Moderator today, Ambassador Iloniemi, did so much to create.
The ”Alternative Worlds” report also had something to say about the ability of nations to adapt to their new environment. Speaking of the world of diffused power and individual empowerment that its authors saw as almost upon us, they wrote:
”Smaller, more agile countries in which elites are also more integrated are apt to do better than larger countries that lack social or political cohesion. Formal governance institutions that do not adapt to the more diverse and widespread distribution of power are also less likely to be successful.”
This assessment prompts me to remark that in recent years I have given a lecture in Washington that I call ”the survival strategies of small nations” in which I make a point about the staying power of small nations that have lived for a long time in the vicinity of larger ones. Naturally Finland figures in it. My inspiration for that lecture was Max Jakobson’s famous book, Finland Survived, yet another reason for me to be grateful for his insights. Linda Jakobson mentioned one Molotov quotation from Max’s writings. I’d like to mention another. In his book, Max recalled Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov’s comment that ”the time of small nations has passed.” In the world that seems to be almost upon us, the time of small nations is far from having passed. In fact it may be just beginning.
Thank you.