IR Grand Theory and High Fashion

I am teaching a course on the International Relations of Central Asia. The course is half IR theory and half practical application to the particular region where I am living and teaching. This is the first time I am teaching the course in my last semester at Nazarbayev University.  I have enjoyed re-reading many of the papers that I haven't engaged with closely since my graduate school days.  The last three weeks we have looked at realism, institutionalism, and the debates between them during the mid 1990s.

One of my students came to me to talk about the readings.  They are hard to understand and put in context for many students who are not used to reading about theory at this high level. The students are particularly drawn to two papers that I assign by Mearsheimer.  The first was written right before the collapse of the Soviet Union that offers grave predictions for the security of Europe (Mearsheimer 1990).  The second is a Foreign Policy piece from 2014 that is an "I told you so" paper about the reasons for Russia's invasion of Ukraine (Mearsheimer 2014). Students are very interested in the back and forth nature of the papers and the passion which dominated the debates.  They were also unsure whether these debates really matter in the long run.

While talking to the graduate student I had a thought strike me. These debates are very similar to the dynamic of the fashion industry that is shown in the film "The Devil Wears Prada."  I hadn't watched the movie in a decade, but I remembered the scene where Meryl Streep's character cuts Anne Hathaway's character down to size after she scoffs at the passion with which the group is putting together an outfit for the cover of the magazine.

The gist of the speech is that powerful people making decisions in rooms like the one they were in influence the everyday fashion of those that don't really think about it.

I showed the above clip to my class and then made the analogy concrete.  The great debates that took place between the Mavens of the intellectual world are very similar to the choices of a fashion editor.  They set the terms of the debate, and set the tone for what is studied and how. Those who are "in the know" in the industry know that they need to know and understand the trends, the history, and the balance of power between the elites sitting in powerful rooms setting trends.

My own training and inclination is to be more open about theories and methods.  I'm a pluralist by training and inclination.  However, my training also took seriously the idea that the Great Debates shaped the study of international relations.  My advisor, Cameron Thies wrote a paper on this (Thies 2012) that directly examined how the discourses of realism built an academic community.  The elites in this case debate to reinforce the status hierarchy and to maintain boundaries.  Like any other elite-driven profession or endeavor (really all of human endeavors), the role of elites is very important.

I think that I understood all of this implicitly for a long time, but the inspiration to compare IR theory to the fashion industry helped me to think more clearly about the ways in which I produce and consume academic information.  And to think much more about how I teach that information to my undergraduate and graduate students.
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Mearsheimer, John J. 1990. “Back to the future: instability in Europe after the Cold War.” International Security, 15(1):5-56.

Mearsheimer, John J. 2014. “Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault: The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin,” Foreign Affairs 93:1-12.

Thies, Cameron G. (2002) Progress, History and Identity in International Relations Theory: The Case of the Idealist-Realist Debate. European Journal of International Relations 8: 147–185.

Arms Procurement Links: Japan Jumps in and India Sinking

One area that I neglected (out of ignorance and not deliberately) in my dissertation was the effect of domestic arms arms procurement procedures on arms exports and imports.  This is an area that I covered recently in a course that I am teaching on the Politics of Arms in International Relations.  I think that I have been primed to see problems of acquisitions because of the readings that we did in class - along with my own personal epiphany about the lack of such thinking in my earlier work. At the bottom of this post I'll post the readings that I had my class look at that turned my own view on the subject.  First, however, I am linking to two stories about domestic arms acquisitions that caught my attention in the past few weeks.

1. Japan to Launch a Defense Procurement Agency (LINK)

Japan's Ministry of Defense will use its new constitutional powers to set up an agency to manage international trade of weapons and military equipment. 

The ministry confirmed with IHS Jane's that the new agency will be named the Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Agency, and will begin operations on October 1. 

The agency's key objectives will include promoting international cooperation on the procurement of defense equipment, enhancing project management, and enhancing development for Japanese defense production and technology bases. 

The Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Agency is set to become one of the most powerful wings of the Japanese Ministry of Defense, and will employ 1,800 people.

It is interesting to think that Japan did not have this agency earlier.  The country obviously has the capacity to engage in defense acquisitions, but those functions were not concentrated in a ministry that was part of the defense establishment.  This new move may not necessarily make acquisition more rational (Caverley and Kapstein), but it will make the Ministry of Defense more powerful.  This will be an interesting subject to follow over the next few years.

2. India's acquisitions process is corrupt and broken (LINK)

In a long and interesting story, the details of India's decades-long failure to replace its rapidly aging and diminished artillery is still not complete.  Problems of corruption meant that the acquisition agency changed its rules.  These rules have negative consequences:

The other problem involved India’s Ministry of Defence. India’s defense procurement establishment has shown an extreme risk-averse behavior and Defense India observes external link that when a competition devolves to a single-vendor solution, the practice is often to re-tender. Soltam and Denel’s exit left just BAE Bofors, until they, too were eliminated by allegations that Bofors had paid INR 640 million (about $16 million) in bribes, trying to secure the order. 

The net effect of corporate blacklists, plus single-vendor prohibitions, is a process that can’t field equipment to India’s military when it’s needed – and sometimes ever. Unfortunately for India’s front-line soldiers, their need for working artillery hasn’t changed.

Things only got worse and weirder.  I recommend that you read the entire article.  The more I think that I understand the dynamics of the arms trade, the more new information like this appears.  I guess I should be happy that there is still plenty of research for me out there!

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Class readings related to (at least tangentially) to domestic arms acquisition processes:

Kovacic, William E., and Dennis E. Smallwood. 1994. “Competition Policy, Rivalries, and
Defense Industry Consolidation.” The Journal of Economic Perspectives 8(4): 91-110.

Mayer, Kenneth R., and Anne M. Khademian. 1996. “Bringing Politics Back in: Defense Policy and the Theoretical Study of Institutions and Processes.” Public Administration Review
56(2): 180-90.

Pearson, Frederic S. 1989. “The Correlates of Arms Importation.” Journal of Peace Research
26(2): 153-63.

Caverley, Jonathan, and Ethan B. Kapstein. 2012. “Arms Away.” Foreign Affairs 91(5):
125-32.

Qingmin, Zhang. 2006. “The Bureaucratic Politics of US Arms Sales to Taiwan.” The
Chinese Journal of International Politics 1(2): 231-65.

Smith, Ron, Anthony Humm, and Jacques Fontanel. 1985. “The Economics of Exporting
Arms.” Journal of Peace Research 22(3): 239-47.

The Politics and Economics of Arms Sales

I have been doing a lot of thinking lately about the nexus between the politics and the economics of arms sales.  It is a question that lies at the heart of my dissertation, but one which is mostly inadequately appreciated by both economists and political scientists.  I had my class (Politics of Arms in International Relations) read some pieces this week which relate to this decision-making nexus and it has brought some of these issues back to the forefront in my own thinking.

First off is a great quote from Smith, Dunn, and Fontanel (1985) about the problems of politics in the transfer of arms [1]. (Emphasis is mine)

"Although arms transfers comprise a significant component of world trade, they have received little attention from mainstream economists.  This partly reflects the data difficulties which inhibit accurate estimation and quantification, and partly the contamination of the topic by political and strategic elements beyond the economists' expertise."

The idea that an issue is contaminated by political and strategic elements is an interesting perspective of political science.  It is refreshing to see economists admit that there may be something that is beyond their expertise as well!

Smith et al (1985) argue that there are three primary reasons for states to wish to sell weapons:

1.     Strategic: governments wish to maintain an indigenous arms industry ins order to ensure weapons designed exactly to their requirements, national independence of supply, and access to the latest military technology. There is an incentive to export, even if exports are below the average cost. (242-3)
2.     Political leverage in foreign policy: nation can assist their "friends" by strengthening their military position while at the same time having potential to influence their behavior (Kinsella tie-in) or that there is a prohibition that weapons not used aggressively or for internal repression (tie-in with Blanton). (243)
3.     Economic benefits: these include technological spin-offs, employment benefits, economic momentum (243-44)

Caverley and Kapstein [2] look at similar arguments in the case of the United States arms production. They argue that the US lost its advantage in arms exports because of the domestic demands of the pentagon.  The penchant for the US military to ask for the nicest, highest spec equipment means that the finished product is priced out of range for non-domestic buyers.  They give the example of the F-35, which was designed to be a low-cost high tech fighter that would be good enough for most missions and which would be eminently exportable.  The rising costs of that aircraft have meant that many staunch allies have reduced or cancelled orders for the aircraft. The increased design specifications have made the aircraft less suitable for the domestic role that it was originally meant to fill.

This is an interesting dilemma.  The world's superpower which has the advantage of a strong domestic market is being squeezed out because of the unrealistic demands of that same market. This echoes the findings of Smith and colleagues in the case of decreased military spending by Britain, GDR, and the US means fewer exports, while the opposite was true for France and Italy.  They note that it was the civilian oversight of the procurement process in those states - with an eye toward exports - that caused this result.

I had some articles in my newsfeed about aircraft sales that made me think of these arguments today.

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Links

First F-35 built in Europe goes for its maiden Flight: LINK

Making F-35s more quickly can lead to problems: LINK

Kuwait is buying the Eurofighter.  LINK

Brazil is buying a Swedish fighter: LINK  LINK2

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REFERENCES

[1] Smith, Ron, Anthony Humm, and Jacques Fontanel. 1985. “The Economics of Exporting Arms.” Journal of Peace Research 22(3): 239–47.
[2] Caverley, Jonathan, and Ethan B. Kapstein. 2012. “Arms Away.” Foreign Affairs 91(5): 125–32.