Getting Security Right
America Needs to Embrace “Strategic Independence”
MILLS: Many business leaders do not know enough about markets and business practices abroad.
Photo by Tracy Powell
In his many years of teaching and research on the topic of leadership, HBS professor emeritus D. Quinn Mills developed a “natural concern” about America’s approach to foreign policy. “In MBA and Executive Education classes,” he notes, “we often focus on the actions and strategies of political leaders because they offer compelling examples that are familiar to everyone.”
Mills’s new book, Masters of Illusion: American Leadership in the Media Age (Cambridge University Press), is the result of a seven-year collaboration with University of North Carolina economics professor Steven Rosefielde. Their impressively researched volume challenges global leaders in government and business alike to push beyond culturally entrenched attitudes and sound-bite media analyses to develop effective strategies based on emerging geopolitical and economic trends, and on vital lessons from military history.
You argue that it is not the war in Iraq or Islamic extremists who pose the greatest challenge to U.S. leadership in the coming decades, but rather emerging trends in other regions. Could you briefly outline those challenges?
There is plenty of current evidence that the Russians intend to reassemble their empire in some form in order to have enough population, resources, and geographic positioning to reclaim their past influence in the world. We believe that by 2010, they will be building fifth-generation nuclear capabilities. The threat of nuclear aggression among powerful nations did not disappear with the Cold War; it remains a major challenge for the United States and poses a more serious danger than terrorism.
The Chinese have a strong economy and a huge population, and they are modernizing and arming themselves very quickly. Their intense nationalism is fueled by a deep sense of grievance about their treatment by Western powers over the last several centuries. Our view is that in the evolving competition for power and wealth among nations, China’s economic strength and authoritarian government will lead to heightened tensions with the United States and allies such as Japan and Taiwan by 2020.
What about Europe?
The European Union poses a less immediate challenge, but a real one nonetheless. There is an element of the European leadership that would like to extend the EU’s strong economic situation to include greater unity in a geopolitical sense, as well. The way to build unification among European nations is to identify a natural rival, and since we already have a number of critics in Europe, we are a natural target.
The EU has some work to do to organize itself, so it is less likely to challenge our position as quickly as Russia or China.
The book advocates an overhaul of American foreign policy based on a philosophy of “strategic independence.” What are the key features of strategic independence?
We are accustomed in the United States to a multilateral approach to foreign policy, because for the last 100 years, we’ve always had strong allies. China, Russia, and Europe all sided with us against Germany and Italy during World War II, but our role in the world is now considerably different, and we need to develop a foreign policy that is in tune with new realities. Strategic independence is a policy of determining what is best for our national security and letting go of obsolete doctrines such as “mutual assured destruction” — an outmoded deterrent in an era of nuclear proliferation — or alliances with other countries based on the assumption that they share our interests.
This is a concept that business leaders instinctively understand. They may have close relationships with suppliers, customers, or competitors, but ultimately the company must develop its own strategy and policies in order to survive in a global economy. Our political leaders seem to have a great deal of difficulty adjusting to realities that corporations have readily taken in stride.
What do you mean by “harmonism” and “convergence” as they relate to foreign relations?
Harmonism is the notion that if it weren’t for a limited number of troublemakers, everyone in the world would want to live very much the way Americans do. President Bush [MBA ’75] believes that, and most, if not all, of today’s presidential candidates share the same view. We disagree. We think there are many people who have totally different values and approaches to life. We may not endorse those views, but if we don’t acknowledge them, we’re in for trouble.
Convergence is the theory that all nations will eventually gravitate toward some form of capitalist, democratic free enterprise. When [former State Department policy planner] Francis Fukuyama described the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War as “the end of history,” he was one of many who promoted what I consider to be a mistaken notion: that capitalism and democracy would triumph globally, and that it was only a matter of time until every nation looked very much like we do.
When we empower U.S. political leaders who believe in harmonism and convergence, we get the war in Iraq. There was nothing wrong with getting rid of Saddam Hussein and making sure Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. Where we went astray was in deciding we could rebuild Iraq in America’s image. That is a course of action based on Americans’ wishful thinking and ignorance of the reality of other cultures and value systems.
Are there comparisons to be made in the way business leaders and political leaders pursue their agendas in the global arena?
There are a couple of important parallels. Many U.S. business leaders, despite the fact that their companies are international, still do not know enough about markets and business practices abroad. Similarly, recent American presidents, presidential candidates, and legislative leaders have shown an appalling lack of knowledge and experience when it comes to other nations’ cultures, history, and economic priorities. Another factor both business and government leaders struggle with is the media’s tendency to provide the public with oversimplified or just plain inaccurate information about political, economic, or competitive factors in other countries. That complicates policy formation and makes it harder for interested constituencies to understand what is in the best interest of a company or of the country.
If you had a chance to pose a question to the leading presidential contenders, what would it be?
What is the United States’ rightful role in the world? That’s the most important question to address at this point in history. And they would likely say that our job is to promote democracy and peace. What they should say is that our job is to stay above the fray and try to keep the competing forces in the world from getting into too much conflict, especially conflict that may affect us.
— Deborah Blagg
