Responsible Stakeholders and Revisionist States

The recent visit of Hu Jintao to the U.S. highlights an interesting game of mirrors being played by the U.S., China, the EU and others concerning the norms of good behavior of members of the international community. A few months ago, Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick called on China to be a “responsible stakeholder” in the international system. Commentators have noted that this is perhaps the best single description we have of our current policy towards China: we want to manage their entrance into great power status so that they are a good citizen in the community of states as opposed to one trying to upset the world system and be a “revisionist state.”

Revisionist states can pose a big problem for states that are established, responsible stakeholders with much to gain from the status quo. Sparta was a revisionist state in relation to Athens in the Peloponnesian War. Napoleon’s France, Hitler’s Germany, and Saddam’s Iraq were all revisionist states. Iran may well be.

As is usual in the relation between established states to (potentially) revisionist, U.S. policy makers are concerned that China not pursue narrow self interest (making deals with Sudan, undercutting anti-corruption efforts in Africa, throwing up vast amounts of greenhouse gases, etc.) at the expense of systemic stability.

If that concern sounds familiar, it is because it is the same one voiced by Europeans (and Latin Americans, and many others) who see the United States as flouting international law to the point of becoming revisionist. In their eyes, the biggest challenge to international rules and systemic stability comes not from China, but from the U.S. as it sets aside established norms such as the Geneva Conventions, non-intervention, and the ABM treaty or refuses to follow-through on evolving norms to which it had previously shown at least some level of commitment (the International Criminal Court and the Kyoto Protocols, for example).

Of course revisionism is in the eye of the beholder. Is the U.S. more revisionist than China? Does it really matter? After a certain point this become more like theology than diplomacy. What is important is that some of the chief concerns animating each of our foreign policies—American, European, Latin American, and Chinese—is an anxiety over how closely the other parties will abide by the rules that we think are important. Some would argue that this is a Prisoner’s Dilemma, a zero-sum game where we cannot communicate with each other and thus must assume the worst. But the real question is: Do we want it to be?