Today's headlines bring news of how the Yemeni government is trying to duck, downplaying the degree of its cooperation with the U.S. in combating al-Qaeda militants operating in Yemen's territory. This is predictable, and it reflects a weakness in how we conduct our diplomacy.
The U.S. has often been able to prevail upon other governments to be surprisingly cooperative in achieving our goals, even where there was a clear potential for negative fallout for the foreign government. Our success in effecting such partnerships often derives directly from our power - we present our best rational arguments but we also cajole, threaten, and offer assistance in varying proportions, and after all, relatively few countries want to get on our bad side. From our point of view, that's good diplomacy. For the countries involved, often the tradeoff is to agree to work with us, but to keep a low profile in doing so to avoid negative political effects.
Yemen, as reported in the linked article, is certainly one of those countries: there is a arguable need (counterterrorism), on which we can offer significant assistance, and which is attractive to a relatively impoverished nation. On the other hand, the Yemeni government is weak politically at the moment, and its control of parts of its own territory is tenuous. Moreover, many of its people don't see terrorism the way we do and may even support al-Qaeda to some degree. In short, it's a very volatile situation in which the government complicates its own ability to govern by being seen to cooperate with us. Even in countries very positively disposed toward us, it's seldom a plus for a government to appear to be a U.S. puppet.
Unfortunately, that's where our diplomatic practice breaks down. We don't keep our secrets very well. Among critics who will accuse an administration of not doing enough, and administration officials who want to show we've been proactive, and journalists who will also be looking to get a nice byline, the fact of our quiet, low-profile cooperation almost always gets leaked and/or exaggerated for our own political purposes at home.
Governments deal with this in different ways -- the Yemenis are trying to downplay their cooperation while Pakistan, with a little more skin in the game, has purposefully rejected some of our overtures to put troops, supplies, or advisors on their territory. But almost never does it help our cause to make public what we have pledged to keep under wraps. At best, it puts a chill in our cooperative arrangements; it may lead to restrictions on our joint actions; it makes foreign governments less inclined to work with us the next time around. At worst, we may end up destabilizing the very governments on which we depend for help.
Afterthought: I know that for many Americans (especially for some of our less internationally-minded elected representatives) this doesn't compute - huh? there are governments that have their own goals, not congruent with ours? That don't want to be seen shaking hands with us? -- but it's true. Let's put the shoe on the other foot, using an example that's not so outlandish right now. Several countries (China looms large among them) are major creditors to the U.S. but may be growing nervous about our expanding deficits and failure to do anything about them. What if China, as the price of continuing to shore up our balance sheet, insisted that the U.S. President raise taxes, or pledge to reduce the deficit within a finite period? Could any U.S. President (Bush, Obama, or even the next incumbent), or either major political party, afford to be seen publicly as having given in to such pressure?
Comments