The Duck of Minerva

Mind the Power Gap

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by Dan Nexon

31 January 2017, 1731 EST

I have new online piece, co-authored with Dani Nedal, at Foreign Affairs:

President Donald Trump believes that America makes terrible deals—from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Why, according to Trump, do other countries take such advantage of the United States? Because our leaders and officials are stupid and incompetent and are terrible negotiators.  “Free trade can be wonderful if you have smart people. But we have people that are stupid,” said Trump when he announced his decision to run for president. On immigration, he was similarly blunt: “the Mexican government is much smarter, much sharper, much more cunning.” And during the negotiations over the Iran nuclear deal, he claimed that “we are making a terrible deal” because “we have the wrong people negotiating for us.” He added that “the Persians are great negotiators” and that “they are laughing at the stupidity of the deal we’re making on nuclear.”

If the Trump Doctrine is to put “America First” by focusing on bilateral bargains—understood in terms of short-term winners and losers—then its corollary is the “Good Negotiator Policy.” In the president’s world, bad people make bad deals.  The best, smartest people—most notably, Trump himself—always get the best bargains. He is right that personal attributes and interpersonal dynamics can make an important difference in international negotiations. But Trump’s focus on individual skill overlooks the most important factor that shapes political agreements in general and international ones in particular: the relative leverage of the parties involved.

The problem is that when the Washington locked in most of its bargains and arrangements, America was much more powerful, in relative terms, than it is now.

It takes a rather naïve negotiator to attempt to overhaul relatively favorable deals from a position of comparative weakness. The United States will not get better bargains than it achieved when it controlled more than twice as much of global power as it currently holds. If Trump abandons long-standing practices of American-led liberal order for bilateral, transactional, and zero-sum relations, other states have little reason to prefer dealing with Washington to China, Russia, or any other country.

When it comes to stiffing contractors, he’s shown a very good understanding of how power asymmetries shape bargaining outcomes. But, overall, Trump’s rhetoric is in keeping with a man who was born on third base and thinks staying there is a testament to his mad business skillz.

Anyway, go read the whole thing, if you’re so inclined. You may need to register to get access.

(cross-posted at Lawyers, Guns and Money)

Daniel H. Nexon is a Professor at Georgetown University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government and the School of Foreign Service. His academic work focuses on international-relations theory, power politics, empires and hegemony, and international order. He has also written on the relationship between popular culture and world politics.

He has held fellowships at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation and at the Ohio State University's Mershon Center for International Studies. During 2009-2010 he worked in the U.S. Department of Defense as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. He was the lead editor of International Studies Quarterly from 2014-2018.

He is the author of The Struggle for Power in Early Modern Europe: Religious Conflict, Dynastic Empires, and International Change (Princeton University Press, 2009), which won the International Security Studies Section (ISSS) Best Book Award for 2010, and co-author of Exit from Hegemony: The Unraveling of the American Global Order (Oxford University Press, 2020). His articles have appeared in a lot of places. He is the founder of the The Duck of Minerva, and also blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money.

2 Comments

  1. NC
    NC on 8 February 2017 at 19.07 EST

    There could be “paper tiger” states eating our lunch because it’s easy to do so, rather than because they are Snyder’s “implacable foes” who desperately want to. Easy to, because rules allow it: thinking of Koremenos, on distribution of gains from agreements going out of sync with bargaining power/leverage. So if we push these “paper tigers” to renegotiate so that distribution of gains are in sync with leverage, then some states will buckle. Like the Voluntary Export Restraints pushed on Japanese tuna just years after GATT, which wasn’t yielding expected benefit to US in the face of Japan’s rapid development/growth (which, incidentally, didn’t necessarily improve Japanese bargaining power,Japan less dependent on financial assistance from US but more dependent tuna exports to US).

    On political linkage benefits of seemingly unequal deals that make others dependent on American protection/markets and thereby give US political benefits in other realms. Maybe Trump thinks others are chumps because he doesn’t value/recognize these linked benefits.

    (A little nitpicking on evolving vs locked in the FA article: institutions evolving vs locking-in benefits: Powerful states lock in advantageous terms; but these terms evolve through gradual tweaks, often reflecting power shift; so US attempt to renegotiate now will fail because status quo has evolved and already reflects relative power? Or because US has less power now than it did when it negotiated the locked-in benefits, which a renegotiation to unlock, reflecting US’s reduced leverage?)

    • NC
      NC on 8 October 2017 at 17.22 EDT

      Regarding the US with less bargaining power nonetheless favorably renegotiating locked-in deals that, for exogenous reasons, no longer yield benefits commensurate even with the US’s reduced bargaining power–“the distribution of gains, left to its own devices, follows a random walk” (Koremenos)–note Tillerson’s point:

      “… we were promoting trade with a lot of these emerging economies, and we just kind of lost track of how we were doing. And as a result, things got a little bit out of balance. …. we’ve got to bring that back into balance because it’s not serving the interests of the American people well.”
      (https://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2017/05/270620.htm)