Foreign misadventures and how to avoid them

Simon Bennett puts the current challenges to the rules-based world order such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine into historical context.

History repeats. In 1991, world leaders talked of the end of the Cold War. Some, like George H.W. Bush, claimed victory. Academic Francis Fukuyama posited the end of history. Such talk proved premature. Putin’s rise to power ended Russia’s experiment with liberal democracy. Stalin and Beria, head of the NKVD, the Soviet Union’s secret police, would feel at home in today’s Russia where press freedoms are curtailed, journalists persecuted, the political system gerrymandered and pacific neighbours such as Georgia and Ukraine invaded. During its war on Ukraine, Russia has kidnapped children, targeted non-military sites, destroyed energy infrastructure so people freeze, denied the developing world Ukrainian wheat and launched misinformation, disinformation and hybrid warfare campaigns against Ukraine’s allies.

The rules-based international order is in retreat as Russia, China and the US assert themselves. Imperialism – a soft power instrument – and colonialism – a hard power instrument – are in vogue. The doctrine of Might is Right is again to the fore. Putin’s war on Ukraine aims first, to recover that country to Moscow’s political orbit and secondly, to provide it a new source of raw materials, both mundane, such as coal, oil, methane and iron ore, and exotic, such as uranium and rare earth oxides (REOs).

Like Putin, Trump is asserting himself, albeit without waging all-out war. Trump’s tactics are subtler: First, hector the target. Denigrate its leaders. Patronise, belittle and misrepresent its people and security situation. If the target refuses to acquiesce, field soft-power instruments such as tariffs. If the target still refuses to acquiesce, threaten to take by force that which is coveted, for example, REOs. Presently, these tactics are being applied to Greenland and its champions.

Trump’s assertion that he wants to federate Greenland for security reasons is disingenuous – a false flag. Trump’s motivation is primarily economic. He covets Greenland’s oil, methane, uranium, nickel, titanium, tungsten, zinc, gold and diamonds. He most assuredly covets Greenland’s REOs. Geographical notes: ‘Estimates suggest that Greenland may have 42 million metric tonnes of rare earth oxides…. To put [that] into perspective… China currently has… 44 million metric tonnes of REOs’. Greenland is a glittering resource prize for any aspirant imperial-colonial power.

In seeking hegemony over Greenland, Trump is employing the imperial-colonial playbook used by European powers in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Specifically:

• issue threats to test the subject’s resolve
• absentia a surrender, garrison the territory, possibly with a private army as Britain did India in the C18th through the East India Company
• install a puppet regime.

Given Trump’s ambivalence towards NATO , the fact that Greenland is linked to Denmark, a NATO member, is likely of little consequence to the US president.

Trump’s ambitions for Greenland should come as no surprise to those familiar with American foreign policy, as, like all great powers, the US has always meddled, sometimes with unexpected, if not catastrophic results. Eisenhower instructed the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to depose Iran’s elected left-leaning leader, Mohammad Mosaddegh. In this effort the CIA was helped by Britain. Following Guatemalan left-leaning leader Jacob Arbenz Guzman’s seizure of American assets, Eisenhower instructed the CIA to destabilise his regime. During Eisenhower’s presidency the CIA trained Cuban exiles to unseat Fidel Castro. The decapitation plan, actioned in 1961 by Eisenhower’s successor, failed. In 1969, Nixon secretly bombed neutral Cambodia in an effort to disrupt the Ho Chi Minh Trail. In 1970, US troops crossed into Cambodia.

In the 1930s, sociologist Robert K. Merton hypothesised that purposive social action may produce both expected outcomes (‘manifest functions’) and unexpected outcomes (‘latent functions’). Merton called undesirable latent functions ‘latent dysfunctions’. Eisenhower’s intervention in Iran brought Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to power. While Pahlavi’s White Revolution emancipated Iran’s women, his secret police, SAVAK, coached by the CIA, imprisoned, tortured and disappeared thousands of political opponents. Persistent social inequality allied with SAVAK’s repression inspired the Iranian Revolution of 1979 that produced a theocratic regime as, if not more repressive than that fashioned by the Shah. Kennedy’s failed Cuba invasion likely cemented Castro’s hold on power. Nixon’s intervention in Cambodia breathed life into a sociopathic communist cadre known as the Khmer Rouge. The Khmer emptied Cambodia’s cities and murdered anyone considered a threat to its Year Zero movement. Circa three million Cambodians were killed. It is not unreasonable to argue that Iran’s repressive regimes, Castro’s political longevity and Cambodia’s genocidal Year Zero movement were to some degree latent dysfunctions of American imperialism.

Practising strategic empathy, with disinterested geopolitics experts gameplaying outcomes from interventions, can help leaders avoid foreign adventures that risk accruing more costs, for example, loss of life, treasure, reputation and allies’ good will, than benefits.

Strategic empathy and gameplay can help Greenland’s allies scope what might happen to the territory. With an expanding American military at his back, Trump has the option of defying the rules-based international order and taking Greenland by force. Greenland is roughly the size of western Europe. If Trump invades, what is to stop Russia and China, perhaps acting in concert gratis their 2022 ‘no-limits’ friendship pact and numerous subsequent joint military exercises, emulating Trump’s tactics? They, too, could seize Greenlandic territory. Greenland could find itself being carved up by Russia, China and the US in the same way that Africa was carved up by Germany, Belgium, Britain and other powers in the 19th century. Were Greenland to be invaded by America’s geopolitical competitors, where would that leave Trump’s plan to exploit Greenland’s resources and secure the northern border? Further, where would that leave NATO, for decades one of the guarantors of the rules-based international order? If such an event came to pass, it is unlikely Trump, who eschews confrontations that involve putting boots on the ground, would join battle with the Russia-China axis. In this scenario, Trumpian colonialism would have rendered the US less secure. In Merton’s argot, it would have delivered to the US a latent dysfunction.

Decision-support instruments, strategic empathy and gameplay should be at the heart of foreign policy decision-making. Skilfully practiced, the instruments can help leaders first, gameplay third party perceptions and reactions, and secondly, make decisions that see objectives achieved with minimal risk.