Wise International Decisions: the Bigger, the Wiser?

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Wise International Decisions the Bigger, the
Wiser?

• Ariel Colonomos (CNRS-CERI)

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Wise international decisions

• The specificity of IR a system of interactions,
  of relationships.
• Correctness of the decision
• Making judgments
• Sending signals, images, indexes (beyond mere
  intelligence)
• Wise international traditions
• Collective wisdom as a process

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The rightness of decisions

• The efficiency and normative value of
• Practical decisions
• Practical decisions grounded on theory, wise or
  unwise

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The bigger, the wiser?

• What can we learn from theory and case studies?
• Are there international actors that, depending on
  their size, are wiser than others?
• Are there entities whose interaction with other
  units would create a wiser international system?
• Are there levels of practice in IR (and
  interaction) that are better than others?

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International modelstheories and policy making
frameworks

• Realism
• Liberalism (liberal internationalism)
• Their vision of wisdom
• Two options unilateralism and multilateralism

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Moving from ideas and models to systemic analysis

• 1/ The wisdom of traditions and their definitions
  of collective wisdom
• 2/ Case studies where ideas meet practice
  economic sanctions, the preventive use of force
• 3/ A wise international structure?

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• Part I Traditions and their practical
  implications

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Wise realism?We love wisdom without becoming
soft. Pericles

• Thucydides and prudence
• Passions and temperance
• What is the wisest collective entity?
  Authoritarianism vs. Democracy
• Avoiding softness and hatred, the wisdom of the
  fabric of images
• Predicting the future wisdom as the art of
  politics.

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Wise liberalism and the politics of cooperation

• Liberal wisdom differs from realist wisdom.
• Positive ontology, optimism, cosmopolitanism and
  advancement of humanity as goals
• Wisdom rooted in morality, making appropriate
  judgments on the modalities of cooperation
• The importance of the law and norms, procedures
  slow down hasty and dangerous decisions.
• The softness of morality should temper the
  harshness of the law.

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• Part II The use of coercion

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• Economic sanctions

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Unilateral sanctions

• The US embargo vs. Cuba (1960-)
• The embargo is strengthened in 1992 and 1996.
• A dysfunctional decision inefficient on the
  target, economically costly for the sender,
  creates legal and diplomatic tensions between the
  US and Europe, might cause humanitarian problems.
• The US is sanctions crazy (Clinton, 1996).

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The limits of democracy in its elaboration of
decisions and norms

• The local imposes its will on the national. Small
  is not wise but stronger than big.
• The decision reflects the passions of small
  groups.
• They express past-oriented resentment.
• They are an obstacle to political, legal, moral
  progress.

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The wisest decision?

• Multilateral cooperation would have been wiser
  more efficient, would have sent a better image to
  the world, multilateralism as a combination of
  optimism and reason.
• Liberal internationalism and multilateral
  cooperation

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Multilateral sanctions

• Liberal internationalism and multilateral
  sanctions, wilsonism
• The UN embargo vs. Irak (1991-2003)
• Assessing the humanitarian disaster caused by the
  embargo (1992)
• The inertia of bureaucracy (a realist critique of
  liberal frameworks)
• The inability to negotiate with S. Hussein the
  art of politics and diplomacy at its worst.

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Wisdom as a learning process

• Knowledge and doctrines as signals
• Epistemic communities and bureaucrats the reform
  of the sanctions regime, smart sanctions.

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Multilateralism and liberal internationalism

• The law is not that wise.
• Big might be unwise.
• There is a lack of efficient coordination between
  subunits of a single big entity.
• Liberal internationalism is more the problem than
  the solution to the sanctions issue. Realism is
  absent from the debate.

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• The use use of force

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Preventive war

• Unilateralism vs. multilateralism as a major
  divide in the US Europe confrontation
• A political, legal, moral confrontation
• Realism and prevention too uncertain to be wise
  (a hasty decision), either unilaterally or
  multilaterally.
• Liberalism and prevention unilateral
  intervention is unwise (illegal, sends a negative
  signal), multilateral preventive intervention and
  the need for institutional design and UN reform.

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• Realism and liberalism provide with some tools
  for elaborating and judging wise or unwise
  decisions and face the unilateral multilateral
  dilemma, however there are no solutions a priori.
• A need for a more global framework, that would go
  beyond those divides.

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• Part III Bridging together multiple scales

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Social and normative forecasting

• An ideal global framework, a possible scenario
• An ideal structure, multi-centric world
• Ideal forms of interaction in an heterogeneous
  setting
• A bottom up path

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• Norms entrepreneurs and moral entrepreneurs and
  the fabric of norms anticipating what would be
  in the future considered as a good norm.
• The cascading effect of norms the landmines
  campaign.
• The reinvention of traditions and doctrines just
  war theory and international humanitarian law,
  banning cluster bombs?
• State society relations and the development of
  ideas corporate social responsibility and its
  transnationalization.

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• Interlocking members between the state and the
  non state world (multi-centric world), moral
  epistemic networks (lawyers in NGOs as
  technicians and moral entrepreneurs), experts and
  governments.
• Defining the ripe moment, seizing windows of
  opportunities, the end of the Cold War and the
  struggle for norms building
• Two complementary paths for ideas the
  transnational realm and the transgovernmental
  space
• The creation of a new space of deliberation
  beyond state borders

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The bigger, the wiser as a goal?

• Eventually, the bigger can be the wiser, more
  probably the smaller is not the wiser (case
  studies).
• Could the international system as a whole be
  wiser than the sum of its parts?
• The international community as the interaction
  between its parts and as an instrument for the
  elaboration of collective wisdom a wise moment
  in the elaboration of a wise international
  community.