My interview with Bruce Bueno, a professor at New York University
Published in Shargh Newspaper on July 14, 2020 -
Bruce Bueno is a professor at New York University, director of the Alexander Hamilton Institute of Political Economy at the university, and a research fellow at the Hofer Research Institute at Stanford University. Bueno is famous for his predictions of international politics and has even been called the Nostradamus of politics. He is the founder of the Selectorate theory in politics. I spoke with him about the relationship between domestic and foreign policy, and due to the significant research he has done on the specific issue of Iran, the conversation turned to Iran and the mechanisms of politics in Iran, focusing on the first topic - the relationship between domestic and foreign policy.
1. You have done detailed research on the relationship between domestic and foreign policy. Could you please share your brief understanding of the impact and influence of these two aspects of politics? I mean, on the one hand, there is the classic proposition, used mainly in the language of politicians and diplomats, that domestic and foreign policy are “completely separate” from each other, and on the other hand, there is the more academic proposition that considers foreign policy to be “an extension of domestic policy.” The former seems to lean more heavily on the realist school of international relations, while the latter leans more on idealism and the liberal tradition.
Let me start with the “classical proposition” you mentioned. It can be simply said that the claim that domestic and foreign policy are separate is wrong and reflects a misunderstanding of what we call selection effects, in which our observations are from non-random samples and therefore not as diverse as one would expect.
This idea has been refuted by Professor Kenneth Schultz, now a professor at Stanford University. In short, what he explains is that when an opposition party exists within the political space of a country, the tendency of this party is usually towards policies that are useful for getting elected and defeating the incumbent government. On the other hand, the party in power is also trying to get re-elected and stay in power. As a result, the incumbent government may adopt a foreign policy that is doomed to failure by the opposition party and therefore faces their opposition. The party in power must be careful not to let its foreign policy fail, because if this policy fails, it will pay the political cost of it in the form of lost votes, just as opposing a successful foreign policy will cost the opposition from the ballot box. As a result, the party in power rarely chooses an adventurous foreign policy. Because such a policy will be the best guide for the opposition party, which, hoping for the failure of that policy and opposing it, will come closer to winning the next election.
As I have stated in my books The Logic of Political Survival and The Dictator's Guide, I believe that every policy, whether domestic or foreign, is made with the consideration of the relevant domestic politics, how policies or actions affect the political survival of the rulers. Accordingly, political survival, not national interests, is the factor influencing almost all policies.
2. What do you think about the mainstream in world politics? Do you think that this space will maintain its more conservative approach? I mean, do the so-called realist policies, which are typically based on power politics, unilateralism and bilateral diplomacy between states, and are considered to be the philosophical founders of Hobbes and Machiavelli, have the upper hand, or are we witnessing a scene that paints a picture of a Kantian lasting peace or some kind of world government in the future? Or perhaps a kind of multilateralism and liberal peace that is expanding? I ask this question mainly because in most cases of crises occurring at different levels, we see international organizations - I mean the United Nations in particular - doing nothing and being unable to do anything. At the same time, on the one hand, we see that the results of many elections in recent years have been in favor of the right, and on the other hand, we see large anti-racist movements.
I have written extensively on this subject, and I invite readers to read these writings, and especially The Dictator’s Handbook, for a nontechnical explanation of this, as well as for the bold claim at the back of the book—I mean the theory of choice—that it is a conceptual upgrade on Machiavelli’s. However, social scientists today have more research tools and a wider range of data at their disposal than they did in the days of Hobbes and Machiavelli and Kant.
International organizations such as the United Nations are not expected to do their job of keeping the peace. International organizations, in exchange for their membership fees from governments, refrain from monitoring or trying to punish their members, lest they face retaliation from them. It is like trying to draw the incorrect conclusion from the precise statement that “global warming is a global issue” that “therefore requires a global solution,” a statement that provides political cover for individual leaders and their respective governments to do nothing more than talk about it. A collective good, such as clean air, is generally ignored because the cost to each individual of trying to solve a global problem is greater than the political advantage they will gain from participating in solving the problem, and they therefore abandon the issue. As for “power politics,” I think this is a very incomplete view of international politics and an extremely dangerous one. More than 40% of wars end in the defeat of the side that was more powerful when the war began. One must always consider the expectations, power-based expectations, achievements, motivations, and costs of a war or conflict. For example, the United States in Vietnam, or earlier, Britain in the American Revolution, did not fail due to a lack of power, but in both cases, sufficient motivation led to the defeat of the superior power.
A standard perspective such as realism, which relies on power to explain international affairs, is very flawed because it neglects issues such as motivation and strategic decisions and long-term issues.
3. Let’s go to Iran: What is your opinion about the reform movement in Iran? A movement that began in 1997 and, one could say, returned to the scene again in 2013 with all its ups and downs, and this return led to the JCPOA that has been largely destroyed today following the 2016 US elections. Do you think this trend in Iran has ended or can it still lead to the development of foreign relations as a result of the upcoming US elections or something like that?
Reform, in my opinion, is meaningful in terms of governance mechanisms and not in terms of single policies. Regarding the Iranian nuclear issue, I said in my February 2009 speech that the Iranian government is not seeking to build nuclear weapons, and this is more due to Iran’s internal will and atmosphere than external pressure. So the JCPOA was meaningful in that the Iranian government and people were losing a lot of money and benefits without any active nuclear weapons program - at least after 2005. As a result, it was in the interests of the Iranian government and people to accept some degree of nuclear restrictions (which they did not need or desire to do in the first place due to their internal will). I do not consider this a reform, of course, and as I said in 2009, Iran was not seeking to build a nuclear bomb in any case (I repeated this prediction in both 2015 and 2016 in the New York Times Sunday Magazine). In the specific case of the nuclear agreement, the JCPOA was both in the interests of Obama - who presented it as an achievement of his foreign policy - and in the interests of the Iranian government and people.
4. In any case, there have been dark spots in Iran-US relations over the past seventy years (after the 1953 coup), some of which, like the 1953 coup, were the result of internal US developments: when Truman (who had met Mossadegh and according to the documents, there was no plan or even idea for a coup in his government) was replaced by Eisenhower, things changed in Iran and the rule in Iran for 25 years was almost the result of a decision to carry out a coup in Washington. Even many inside the US believe that what happened on November 3, 1979 at the US embassy in Tehran was the forced result of 25 years of dissatisfaction that had remained in the Iranian society since the coup. Another deterioration in relations between them, again due to the elections in Washington, was in 2016, during which a comprehensive agreement that had been reached after years of negotiations and fears and hopes, and which many considered a win-win agreement and a basis for future solutions in relations, was unilaterally abandoned by the US. What do you think about this exit from the JCPOA in 2018? We know that many hopes for the restoration of relations are dead today, the daily life and economy of Iranians have been affected compared to the period of tangible “normalization” after the JCPOA, and people are witnessing that all these changes were due to the unilateral approach of the Trump administration. Do you think that this might harm the long-term future of any possibility and effort to restore relations more than before?
Let me start the answer with this mental error that seems to me like a duel with the past. When I teach a course on “Resolving Foreign Crises,” I give my students the example of chess. Now I ask you, when you move a piece on the chessboard and it is, say, the black side’s turn, do you constantly think about how the pieces are placed in their current squares? Absolutely not. Because there is no other current situation and there is no way to go back. So history has brought the chessboard to this position, and rightly or wrongly, this is the position we are facing right now. It seems that instead of blaming the past moves of each side, we should think about what the best choices are for the next moves. Blaming the past is essentially a never-ending, regressive process—whether it is for the embassy occupation or the coup or the steps backwards and backwards—and in the end, it will not yield any benefit.
As for Trump’s decision to withdraw from the JCPOA, I think it was a very bad move, and I say this for strategic and forward-looking reasons. The deal was a step forward, but it had problems on all sides. Of course, this is the nature of any deal where each side makes concessions to reach an agreement and neither side is completely satisfied, but at the same time both believe that the resulting agreement is better than no agreement and would not have agreed to it otherwise.
Most of my students in my foreign policy class study how the Iran (and the US) nuclear deal should proceed, which is also a very complicated issue. We know that from Mr. Trump’s perspective, in order to improve the JCPOA, Iran must accept more restrictions (longer duration, less restrictions on inspections, and the release of Hezbollah and proxies), but in any case, there must be an appeal to Iranian sovereignty to renew the deal. What could the concessions Trump make be? I think that without these concessions, negotiations will never begin. Also, as a game theorist, I think that agreements can only be renegotiated if there is sufficient incentive for both sides, and it is difficult to imagine this in the current era - the Trump presidency. Moreover, Iran will never accept the implementation of the concessions it made in the JCPOA in exchange for new concessions.
In any case, I am optimistic about the future. Why? Notice that I never mentioned the phrase "the American position". Because I think that all positions at any time are to advance interests and nothing more. If these interests are aligned with the will of the Iranians, so much the better. If not, they will do what they think is in their best interest. With this view, under the leadership of any president, negotiations for a new agreement are possible.
Part of the problem, as was the case in this question, is the focus on the past, which assumes a single, solid foreign policy and national interest for Iran and the United States, even when you acknowledge and mention the change in decisions and choices in the succession of Truman to Eisenhower, you still seem to assume that the policy of the United States should be fixed. However, I honestly think that now that the JCPOA is damaged in the current situation, it could even benefit some tendencies in Iran more than future American leaders. Because now the door has been opened for the more controversial part of power to talk about the need for a nuclear deterrent that will create a lot of fear, as if it were just talk.
5. What do you think about the impact of domestic politics on foreign policy in Iran specifically in the current situation? Especially if we consider it in comparison to countries like India, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the like?
Domestic politics always influences foreign policy. But this does not necessarily mean elections alone. In the case of Iran, not all of this influence is electoral – high-ranking military officers, influential individuals, religious leaders and the interests of large economic corporations also have their own influence. In the case of Saudi Arabia, influence is expected only from senior members of the royal family, senior military officers (who are typically from the same Al Saud family) and influential individuals, and there is no election. In these structures, the rulers’ policy-making is based on the interests and considerations of a small group. The Indian government is of course more constrained by the will of the majority. But unfortunately there too, given the electoral structure, the impact of votes is less than it seems. In Turkey, Erdogan is very busy working on a coalition that will keep him in power and as a result continues to purge the army, universities, etc.
6. Iran reached an agreement with the former Democratic administration of the United States. Given the upcoming elections in the United States and also considering that Iran will have a new government next year, how do you assess the fate of the agreement? Do you think that there is still a possibility of implementing a win-win for this agreement in the future?
As I said before, I am hopeful for the future. Changing the atmosphere and relations between them is beneficial to both Iranian and American societies. But if negotiations are to continue in the future, I would advise your government and myself to pursue a treaty rather than an agreement like the JCPOA. Treaties are harder to achieve, but exiting them is also more difficult.
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