Kal Holsti - Why Nations Realign: Foreign Policy Restructuring in the Postwar World

ROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS:
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Volume 3

WHY NATIONS REALIGN

Foreign Policy Restructuring in the Postwar World

K. J. Holsti, Miguel Monterichard,
Ibrahim Msabaha, Thomas W. Robinson,
Timothy Shaw and Jacques Zylberberg

First published in 1982 by George Allen & Unwin (Publishers) Ltd

This edition first published in 2016
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1982 K. J. Holsti

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-138-94006-2 (Set)
ISBN: 978-1-315-66794-2 (Set) (ebk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-94007-9 (Volume 3) (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-67449-0 (Volume 3) (ebk)

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Why Nations Realign:
Foreign Policy Restructuring
in the Postwar World

K. J. Holsti
University of British Columbia

with

Miguel Monterichard
Ibrahim Msabaha
Thomas W. Robinson
Timothy Shaw
Jacques Zylberberg

K. J. Holsti, 1982
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. No reproduction without permission. All rights reserved.

George Allen & Unwin (Publishers) Ltd,
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George Allen & Unwin (Publishers) Ltd,
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Allen & Unwin Inc.,
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George Allen & Unwin Australia Pty Ltd,
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First published in 1982

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Holsti, K. J.
Why nations realign: foreign policy restructuring in the postwar world.
1. World politics1945
I. Title
327'.09'04 D843
ISBN 0-04-351062-0

Set in 10 on 11 point Plantin by Preface Ltd, Salisbury, Wilts,
and printed in Great Britain by Mackays of Chatham

This volume completes a trilogy of essays about some of the conventional wisdom in international relations and foreign policy theory. I have long been convinced that many Western analyses of international politics and foreign policy reflect certain views about the world which are not shared globally, and which distort or evade certain realities. Writers about the state of the contemporary international system have projected on to the world some of the main characteristics of the relations between the industrial states of the West. Theories of economic integration on the EEC model, and of growing global interdependence, provide perspectives of international relations which sometimes hide more than they reveal. No one disputes the potential economic, political and social benefits resulting from increased communications and from movements of political and economic integration. While the optimistic assumption that these trends or developments will lead to peace needs to be scrutinized very critically even in the Western context, a mounting body of evidence, some of which is related in this volume, supports an insight offered 200 years ago by Rousseau: as nations draw more closely together, and particularly where the relationships are dramatically asymmetrical, conflict, tensions and war rather than peace and understanding are possible results. The case studies offered in this volume reveal clearly that in some instance high interdependence or dependence cause nationalist, 'moat-building' behavior foreign policies that are designed to assert national independence and autonomy. I did not launch this volume attempting to substantiate this point. But most of the cases leave it as an inescapable conclusion.

In fact, this study has as its genesis an interest in an aspect of foreign policy which has received little attention in the theoretical literature, namely, foreign policy change. A review of current writings reveals that the sources of foreign policy public opinion, decision-making, misperceptions, the personality drives of key policy-makers, and the like have received more attention than actual policies.

The studies also reveal that overhauling a nation's pattern of relations is easier announced than carried out. Despite the serious commitments of leaders to change their roles and partners in the international or regional systems, the results are often meager, the costs often very high. This suggests that the old metaphor of international politics as a field on which are located independent, sovereign states that make and break alliances and alignments with impunity is inappropriate in the present era. But the competing metaphor of a spider's web international system where a variety of state and non-state actors interact, 'process' issues and 'manage' interdependence is equally off the mark. Whatever the outcome of the great debates about dependence, centreperiphery relations and other pessimistic characterizations of northsouth relations, several of the cases lead to the conclusion that these pictures of the world contain some essential truths. The economic costs of attempting to break out of a dependence relationship may indeed be very high. Yet the list of cases in the postwar world as well as recent events in Iran and elsewhere reveal that nationalist impulses, resulting in policies of isolation or extreme self-sufficiency, have by no means been muted by some mythical global interdependence.

At a minimum, readers should find the cases interesting. Our purposes are more fully achieved if the studies confirm that foreign policy change is a subject worthy of systematic analysis. And more ambitiously, if this foray into a little-understood subject generates refinements, and discussion and debate about the nature of the contemporary international system and the theory of foreign policy, a more ambitious objective will have been achieved.