5.2 EVRCM: Applied During Project Execution
5.2.8 EVRCM Applied to the Selection of Resource Alternatives: Phase II Example
National roles of a state are an approach that is used for characterising a state’s foreign policy. This approach to characterising states behaviour operates at a high level of generalisations. It is not concerned with specific foreign –policy acts but with a states general orientation 112
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towards world politics. K. J. Holsti defines this to be “general attitudes and commitments towards the external environment and its fundamental strategy for accomplishing domestic and external objectives and for coping with persistent threats”. A state’s orientation is not revealed in any foreign-policy act but is a way of characterising the cumulative impact of large numbers of foreign policy actions taken over long period of time.
We can characterize a state’s general orientation towards world politics in a number of ways. On a most general level, isolationism, nonalignment, multilaterism, and imperialism are terms frequently employed for this purpose. Holsti suggests that we can think in more specific terms and identify national role orientations for states. National roles incorporate the basic fears and aspirations of policymakers, as well as economic, geographic, domestic, and systemic constraints on states’
actions. States are not restricted to holding one national role orientation at a time, nor is it impossible for states to adopt new national roles or shed old ones. The important point is that national roles have a greater staying power than does the impact of an individual policymaker’s personality. This allows analysts to make prediction about how a state will act under given circumstances. For illustrative purposes, we will discuss four national roles.
(i) Some states see themselves as bastions of revolutions. They believe that they have a duty to organise or lead revolutionary movements around the world. Such leadership requires that they give some combination of moral, monetary, economic, or military aid to revolutionaries who share their vision of international relations. Holsti concluded that the United States and the defunct Soviet Union tend to hold this role orientation. The United States sees itself as having a duty to promote democracy abroad, while Soviet Union then repeatedly pledged its support to anti capitalist national liberation movements in the Third World.
(ii) States may also see themselves as regional leaders. In this national role orientation, states believe that they should be in the fore front of all regional diplomatic, military, or economic initiative. Egypt has long adopted this role orientation in the Middle East, while Nigeria from independence in 1960 adopts Africa as the centerpiece of its foreign policy and assumes the position of“giant of Africa”.This national role propels Nigeria to play a “big brother” role in West Africa sub-region. A good example is its leadership in almost every peace-keeping operation in the region through ECOMOG forces. China sees itself as occupying a similar position in Asian politics.
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Again, both superpowers have adopted this role orientation. The United States sees itself as leader in the Western Hemisphere, and the Soviet Union then, but now Russia sees itself as leader in Eastern Europe.
(iii) A faithful ally national role orientation stresses the identity of interests between itself and another state. This similarity may be rooted in historical or ideological bounds, or in the perception of a common threat, and it produces a tendency to support its ally almost in reflex-type fashion in international disputes. British foreign policy has shown such a tendency in the postwar era in its support for U. S. diplomatic and military initiatives.
(iv) Our last example is that of mediator-integrator. In this role orientation, the state sees itself as a regional or global “fixer”.
Frequent participation in United Nations (UN) and multinational peacekeeping efforts and international conferences characterise the behaviour of states adopting this role orientation. Canada, France, Hungary, Yugoslavia and the Scandinavian countries are prime examples of states that have adopted this national role.
During its involvement in Vietnam, the United States can be seen as having adopted three national role orientations. Regional leader, regional protector, and defender of the faith.
SELF-ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 2
Explain the approaches used in characterising a states’foreign policy
3.3 Flexibility of the Capability Factors
The direct utility of the economic means of policy as tools of action is strictly limited. But the level of a country’s economic development, its rate of economic growth and the proportion of it population that can be supported while not directly engaged in production are nonetheless strikingly most important characteristics. Economic means are most important for their convertibility and flexibility. It is that flexibility which therefore warrants attention as it relates to the flexibility of other factors of capabilities. There is an oligopology of capability, a very unequal stratified world society. This creates a narrow oligarchy of world influence.
Flexibility is an important quality, possessed in different measure by different brands of capability. The quality is that of breadth, in application and in use. The U. S. nuclear deterrents were useless in waging a war in Vietnam. In principle, a threat of massive destruction and suicide is neither credible nor sufficiently dedicated to make such 114
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final adjustments. By contrast, persuasive diplomacy is applicable, in principle and in that sense diplomatic capabilities are more flexible than nuclear-strike forces. A high quality diplomatic corps is capable of doing more and more varied things than a high quality second-strike force. The criterion of flexibility ought to be applied in the evaluation of any states total capabilities along with the more conventional criteria of effectiveness, cost-effectiveness and orientation to actual problems.
Thus, there is the need to know not only whether a state is prepared to meet its actual challenges, whether it is adequately prepared to meet them and whether its level of preparedness is attained at the lowest possible cost, but also whether it is ready to meet a very broad spectrum of probable and possible challenges, (threats and opportunities) of strikingly different types.
Economic capability is the most broadly convertible power factor. But the capability for collective action and (indirectly) the ego-demographic base are also potential sources of capabilities directly applicable for foreign policy, even though they may not themselves be directly applicable to. Thus, the larger a state’s Gross National Products (GNP) and per capita income, the more this highly flexible economic capability it has and the more variety it can introduce into its actual means of action. Similarly, a united, organised, literate, skillful, obedient, and dedicated population would provide a state with a large capacity for collective action, useful to increase its economic means or enlarge its conventional forces. It is more normal for private ties, political dissidence and disinfection, personal independence and political education and skepticism, or general ignorance, to limit economic productivity and the will to conform politically.
On the other hand, the collective volition of an organised mass renders hostile subversion, propaganda threats, bribes, boycotts, and violence ineffective, it can even liberate emotional and physical energies otherwise untapped. An astute leadership can mobilise these energies, materialise them for mass war. Such collective militancy, if long sustained, may be as flexible as a heavily industrialised and political penetration, propaganda cadres, and sub conventional forces (which are especially difficult to support without self- sustained morale and motivation).
Economic capabilities and collective capacity represent highly flexible but potential capabilities, while other actual capabilities have a varying breadth of application. Eco-capabilities are more material, more measurable, steadier, more subject to control, and easier to turn to a wide range of services.
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SELF-ASSESSMENT EXERCISE 3 What is flexibility of capability factors?
4.0 CONCLUSION
The world’s oligopoly of economic production is interchangeable with potential constellations of influence. Regional, sub-regional and the world wide wealth and geographical location are factors to reckon and so also are military capabilities, extent servitudes and alignment, statements and will to influence the international environment and other power factors. These factors do enlarge or diminish the actual influence of any state. An operating inequality of influence is inferred from the inequality of capabilities, even as an oligarchy of world political influence is in actuality not in complete and one-to-one correspondence to the oligopoly of eco-capability.
5.0 SUMMARY
An international oligarchy of influence tightly stratified and smaller than the international oligopoly of economic, military and geographic capabilities exists due to the fact that the states are unequally endowed with these capability factors. The United States of America is a world power, whose presence is felt in most regional subsystems of which it is often the chief member.
The influence of any state is reduced through the existence or location in its region of several powers of the same rank, sometimes these powers are hostile and the hostility could be long lasting, for instance, Libyan influence, the influence of Ghana and of South Africa are much reduced by Nigeria’s presence.
6.0 TUTOR-MARKED ASSIGNMENT
1. Identify and explain the four national roles by which a state’s foreign behaviour can be characterised
2. The United States is a “World Power” whose presence is felt in most regional subsystems. Discuss.
3. What do you understand by flexibility of capability factors?
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7.0 REFERENCES/FURTHER READING
Glenn, H. and Key, M.K. (1991). Dimensions of World Politics. New York: Harper Collins Publishers.
Holsti, J (1988). International Politics. A Framework for Analysis (5th Ed.). Enylewwod Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.
Kegley, C. Jr. (2007). World Politics; Trend and Transformation, (11th Ed.). Belmont: Thomson Wadsworth.
Richard, F. (1972). This Endangered Planet: Prospects and Proposal for Human Survival. New York: Vintage.
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MODULE 5
FOREIGN POLICY ANALYSIS
FOREIGN POLICIES CASE STUDIES
Unit 1 Phases of Foreign Policy of the United StatesUnit 2 Phases of Foreign Policy of the Soviet Union Unit 3 The Cuban Missile Crisis
Unit 4 American Involvement in Vietnam Politics