TY - JOUR
AU1 - Christian, Reus-Smit,
AU2 - Welch, Larson, Deborah
AU3 - Andrew, Kydd,
AU4 - Lawrence, Freedman,
AU5 - J., Wheeler, Nicholas
AB - Introduction: The elusive pursuit of trust in international relations When commentators look back on the state of trust in contemporary world politics, the words of Charles Dickens in A tale of two cities will seem sadly appropriate: ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness’. On the one hand, the president of the world's supposedly leading liberal democracy is given to emotional declarations of trust in some of the world's least trustworthy autocrats, with Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un well within his circle of trust. On the other hand, trust is withering on all fronts. The Iran nuclear deal is on the rocks because President Donald Trump does not trust the Iranians; Brexiteers do not trust the European Union; trust in multilateral institutions and international law is waning; action to slow global warming is stalled because of a tragic mix of short-term self interest and distrust in climate science; and, while trust in social media commentary seems limitless, traditional journalism is decried as fake news. Understanding how trust works in world politics is thus of paramount importance, and Nicholas Wheeler's Trusting enemies is a major contribution to this elusive task. Not only does Wheeler present a new theory of trust, his goal is to grasp trust at its most difficult: between enemies. Moreover, he focuses on the development of trust at the interpersonal level, holding that such trust is essential to diffusing tensions and resolving international conflicts. At a time when global peace and stability hang precariously on the declared trust between adversarial leaders—as is the case of North Korea—Wheeler's insights are valuable indeed. Wheeler begins with a critique of rationalist approaches to trust, which treat trust as a product of costly signalling. An enemy can be trusted if it engages in signalling behaviour that is sufficiently costly that its peaceful intent can be assumed at low risk. The problem is, however, that signals between enemies are notoriously hard to read, with adversaries commonly interpreting even genuine signals as insincere—the problem of confirmation bias. Wheeler's theory seeks to explain how this ‘ambiguity of signalling’ can be overcome. The key, he argues, is that adversaries have to move beyond the ‘calculative trust’ emphasized by rationalists to a state of ‘bonding trust’, which emerges principally, and even exclusively perhaps, through interpersonal engagements between leaders. Such bonding trust can begin to emerge, Wheeler argues, when leaders meet face to face, understand that their states' actions can appear threatening—what Wheeler calls a ‘security dilemma sensibility’—and believe that their interactions confirm prior beliefs that their opponents are potentially trustworthy. Together, these conditions allow a process of bonding to evolve between leaders, resulting, under favourable circumstances, in ‘identity transformation’—where former adversaries come to positively identify with each other's interests. When interpersonal interactions reach this stage, the ambiguity of signalling is overcome and a condition of ‘trust as suspension’ is reached. This ‘gives the actors the subjective certainty that each other's signals are sincerely aimed at communicating their peaceful intent’ (Trusting enemies, p. 12). Trusting enemies has many strengths. It addresses an issue of critical importance. It advances a genuinely new theory: positive theorizing at its best. Furthermore, theory is grounded in detailed historical case-studies of crucial meetings between US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, between Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, as well as the failed engagement between US President Barack Obama and Iranian leader Ali Khamenei. It is interdisciplinary, in particular drawing on social psychology to advance International Relations theory. Moreover, as the other authors to this forum note, it is an all too rare model of transatlantic scholarship, seeking to integrate constructivist and rationalist insights. As with all important books, though, it offers not an end to a debate, but raises as many questions as it answers, pushing the debate in new and productive directions. Many of these questions are raised in the following commentaries, with three issues warranting particular attention. The first concerns the nature and salience of bonding trust. Deborah Welch Larson wonders whether this is trust at all. Trust, she argues, always involves deciding and acting in a context of acceptable risk: ‘trust is only relevant when the actor is aware of the possibility of betrayal but decides to go ahead anyway’ (p. 1435 in this forum). For Wheeler, leaders who have bonded can achieve trust as suspension, where they are certain that each other's signals are genuine. From Larson's perspective, this is not trust. The forum's other authors are more willing to see it as a form of trust but question its salience in reconciling enemies and resolving or containing conflicts. In Andrew Kydd's words, if we ‘posit a spectrum of trust from deep distrust, to moderate distrust, to neutrality, to moderate trust and to deep trust, the urgent need is to get states from deep distrust to moderate distrust, and then to neutrality, because that greatly reduces the risk of war’ (p. 1438 in this forum). The calculative trust emphasized by rationalists might not be as deep, but it may be more common and more salient in international relations. A second issue concerns context: where do the dyadic processes of interpersonal bonding emphasized by Wheeler fit, first, within the broader set of relationships in which they are necessarily embedded and, second, within the wider structural environments in which they unfold? For Lawrence Freedman, presidents and prime ministers are first and foremost politicians and, as such, they are always juggling multiple relationships; some with friends, some with adversaries, some characterized by trust, others by implacable distrust. Understanding this broader web of relationships is crucial for understanding trust, as seemingly sincere signals—even those given in processes of interpersonal bonding—may be violated to service other relationships. For Freedman, politicians who appreciate this, who understand each other as political actors, may achieve a politically attuned form of calculative trust, one that delivers significant peace dividends, without ever reaching bonding trust (pp. 1439–41 in this forum). In addition to this broader relational context in which trust plays out, my fellow authors also highlight the importance of the institutional and geopolitical environments. With regards to institutions, Freedman points to the difference that regime-type makes to relations of trust: as, on the one hand, autocrats may have the institutional freedom to follow through on their commitments that democratic leaders lack, while, on the other, it is easier to read the political constraints facing democratic than autocratic leaders (pp. 1439–41 in this forum). Institutions are also essential to the success of the international summits Wheeler focuses on. The personal chemistry between leaders may come to nought if national bureaucracies have not adequately laid the groundwork for potential agreements. As Larson explains, ‘summit meetings are infrequent events—largely social and ceremonial occasions that do not include substantive negotiations between leaders. Detailed preparations for them are made at lower levels of the bureaucracy, so that leaders can simply sign off on a prepared document’ (p. 1435 in this forum). All of this takes place within the broader structural context of the international system, in particular the structure of the conflict at hand. Bonding trust will emerge, Freedman argues, and will be most relevant, only in particular kinds of conflicts: ‘those already shown to be dangerous without actually having led to excessive violence. If the two sides are already at war there may be an urgent need for peacemaking, but this will require third party mediators. At the other end of the scale, the same approach is going to be far less relevant for disputes which are less important … and to which political leaders will not devote sufficient attention’ (p. 1440 in this forum). The final issue concerns how trust works at different levels of adversarial relations. Several years ago, I was part of an academic delegation to Israel and the occupied territories and met with both Israeli and Palestinian negotiators—as well as Palestinians villagers, Jewish settlers and liberal Israeli peace activists. One of the many things that struck me was that in this realm of protracted conflict—a near trust-free world—pockets of trust nonetheless existed. Most significantly, it was clear that the negotiators we met, who in some cases had been sitting across the table from each other for several decades, had developed friendships and perhaps even interpersonal trust. Clearly, in the absence of trust at other levels of the Israeli–Palestinian relationship, this has been insufficient to moderate, let alone resolve, the conflict. However, it highlights the need to locate the bonding trust between peak leaders—that Wheeler illuminates so powerfully—within the broader spectrum of relationships between adversaries, and to ask how trust working at different levels affects conflict resolution. Practices of second track diplomacy are built on the assumption that confidence-building—and even trust—at lower levels matters. Trust: personal and impersonal dimensions Nicholas Wheeler has written a very engaging and original book on the nature and origins of trust in international relations. He presents a new theory of trust, which argues that trust is based on the personal interactions of leaders. Before arriving at this conclusion, Wheeler surveys a wide range of recent literatures on trust in various fields—including sociology, political science and psychology—and provides a persuasive critique of previous International Relations discussions of trust. Wheeler's book would be an extremely useful starting-point for anyone wanting to do research on this topic. The dominant strand in the literature on trust is rationalist and game theoretic. The best example of this type of approach is Andrew Kydd's Trust and mistrust in international relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005). Kydd posits that trust derives from one state's use of costly signals—cooperative actions that would be too costly for a potential cheater to carry out. Whether a state's conciliatory actions are viewed as costly, however, is a matter of perception. If the target has a ‘bad faith’ image of the initiator, it is likely to dismiss any conciliatory gestures as propaganda or a trick. Wheeler contends that trust is necessary for accurate signal interpretation. In contrast, the other main strand of the literature maintains that trust rests on beliefs about the opponent's nature and intentions. Overcoming mistrust requires undermining ‘bad faith’ images of the other side through incremental concessions, as in the Gradual Reciprocation in Tension Reduction (GRIT) proposal developed by psychologist Charles Osgood in the 1960s. GRIT prescribes making small unilateral concessions, increasing in cost and risk if the other makes a reciprocal response, to disconfirm the other state's mistrust. Wheeler, however, argues that an incremental approach to building trust is insufficient because small concessions provide no assurance of what a state will do when the risks of betrayal are higher. Indeed, trust entails a suspension of scepticism (p. 8)—as it must because evidence concerning the other's intentions is never complete or conclusive. In Wheeler's view, trust as suspension is most likely to evolve from face-to-face interactions between individual leaders in which there is humanization of the other and space for empathy. He backs this up by looking at a number of case-studies of negotiations, including between US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev; Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif; and US President Barack Obama and Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. This is a major contribution, because little has been written about leaders developing greater interpersonal trust. However, defining trust as suspension means that leaders treat the uncertain as if it were certain—they do not consider the possibility that the other might cheat. On the other hand, if one does not even entertain the thought that the other could cheat or betray their trust, then arguably trust is not involved. Trust is only relevant when the actor is aware of the possibility of betrayal but decides to go ahead anyway. The decision to rely on the other may be based on intuition rather than calculation, but it is deliberate. Taken to extremes, the idea of trust as suspension could amount to ignorance or blind faith. For example, users give personal information to Google and Facebook without awareness that their data may be sold to advertisers and political campaigns, but is this trust? Or merely blithe ignorance? No doubt trust as interpersonal bonding deserves to be given more attention, as Wheeler demonstrates. But interpersonal trust does not exhaust the forms of trust that may evolve between states and may not be sufficient. Even if two leaders develop a personal rapport, they must then persuade their advisers, domestic constituencies and bureaucratic officials in order to carry out their policies. Wheeler cites Keren Yarhi-Milo's Knowing the adversary: leaders, intelligence, and assessment of intentions in international relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014) on the disproportionate impact of vivid information on political leaders. But in psychology, the influence of vivid information is considered only to be a bias. Statistical information or knowledge based on study and experience should be given greater weight than a single, unrepresentative anecdote. For example, in predicting Joseph Stalin's postwar intentions, President Franklin D. Roosevelt should have placed more reliance on experts than on the impressions he derived from his meetings with the Soviet leader at conferences in Tehran and Yalta. They could have told him the troubled history of Polish–Russian relations and explained the strategic importance of Poland. If he had done so, Roosevelt would not have been surprised that the Soviet Union would not allow free elections in Poland. Indeed, summit meetings are not a reliable foundation on which to base trust between states. Summit meetings are infrequent events—largely social and ceremonial occasions that do not include substantive negotiations between leaders. Detailed preparations for them are made at lower levels of the bureaucracy, so that leaders can simply sign off on a prepared document. Having leaders unfamiliar with the issues negotiate in detail under time pressure is a recipe for disaster. President Donald Trump's humiliating press conference after the 2018 Helsinki meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin as well as the unclear results of his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un illustrate the dangers of having leaders negotiate without advisers in the room. Summit meetings are also artificial occasions—usually events are scripted in advance to convey a particular impression. For example, at the 1985 Geneva summit between Reagan and Gorbachev, Reagan's advance team chose the boat house for what was portrayed as an impromptu meeting between the two leaders because it had a fireplace (p. 155). Moreover, leaders should be aware that the impressions they acquire at summit meetings could be misleading. For example, Stalin was soft-spoken and avuncular at meetings with foreign leaders, concealing his suspicion and calculation. In fact, Roosevelt's nickname for Stalin was ‘Uncle Joe’. Wheeler argues that trust is necessary for an accurate interpretation of another state's conciliatory signals. This raises questions about the direction of the causal relationship—does trust lead to accurate signal interpretation? Or does accurate signal interpretation lead to trust? In his case-study of Gorbachev and Reagan, one must ask how important their face-to-face meetings were in the development of trust in comparison to the actions that Gorbachev carried out—such as agreeing to cut Soviet strategic weapons by 50 per cent or accepting onsite inspection and the zero option in the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. If Gorbachev had not made these significant concessions, would Reagan have developed greater trust of the Soviets' intentions? Finally, Wheeler's book implies that interpersonal bonding is the preferred way to achieve trust (p. 59), despite there being other pathways to trust—including GRIT and shared interests. GRIT often works because it mobilizes public opinion in the target state in favour of reciprocation. For example, while US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles did not regard the Soviets' signing of the 1955 Austrian State Treaty as sincere, the Soviet gesture put domestic pressure on President Dwight D. Eisenhower to reciprocate by holding a summit meeting, which led to detente in the so-called spirit of Geneva. Another causal factor not considered by Wheeler is consistent good behaviour over time, which can lead to changes in beliefs. Finally, former enemies often become friends and allies when they face a common enemy and have shared interests. For example, after Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, the United States, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom fought against Hitler together. Similarly, President Richard Nixon went to China and sought cooperation with Mao Zedong to contain a rising Soviet Union. Shared interests can be a potent source of trust. Trust beyond reason? Nicholas Wheeler's new book, Trusting enemies, is a terrific contribution to the literature on trust in international relations. It is packed full of interesting ideas and reflections, is extensively researched and well written. Empirically speaking, it reinterprets the frequently studied end of the Cold War and takes us beyond it to look at India and Pakistan in the late 1990s and the United States and Iran in 2009. It is also a transatlantic book, in that it is situated in the British approach to international relations but very much in conversation with US scholarship on the security dilemma, trust, diplomacy and leaders. The main argument of the book can be summed up as follows. Trust, defined as an expectation that the other side will not harm you, makes cooperation possible in international relations. How can trust be established between actors who currently distrust each other? Rationalist, incrementalist approaches, based on the logic of costly signalling, are doomed to fail because some leaders have enemy images of the adversary, and so impute fixed and malign intentions to them. Such leaders will interpret any reassuring signals sent by the other side as signs of weakness or deceit, and so the signals will fail to reassure. Instead, leaders must meet face to face. Leaders who have ‘security dilemma sensibility’—or are willing to entertain the idea that the other side might be fearful of them—will emit and receive ‘indices’ of each other's trustworthiness when they meet at summits. These involuntary proofs of their trustworthiness will build trust between them, enabling them to correctly interpret any subsequent reassuring signalling. They will then go beyond a calculative approach to weighing the other side's trustworthiness to a state of ‘trust as suspension’, in which they share identities and discount entirely the possibility that the other side might have malign intentions or be betraying them. There is certainly much to like about the argument, and the role of summits in reassurance is undeniable. However, I will make four points in response. First, Wheeler's argument is vulnerable to his own criticism of the rationalist approach. Second, Wheeler's discussion of the reassuring properties of summits neglects the role of untrustworthy actors. Third, Wheeler is mostly silent on face-to-face diplomacy by individuals other than the national leader. Such interaction is common, but trust is less so. Finally, trust as suspension is such a deep level of trust that it is probably rare in international politics, at least between former enemies. First, Wheeler's critique of the rationalist approach is to say that many leaders have enemy images, and so will fail to adjust their beliefs in response to costly signals of reassurance. US Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger is an example of someone who remained sceptical about Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, even as President Ronald Reagan and Secretary of State George Shultz began to trust him. But then Wheeler goes on to say that for reassurance to work, the leaders going to the summits must have security dilemma sensibility, or a belief that it is possible that the other side is fearful of them. This is an implicit acknowledgement that Wheeler's approach is also incapable of fostering reassurance between leaders imbued with enemy images. If costly signals did not work on Weinberger, would attending a summit with Soviet leaders have increased his trust in them? If not, Wheeler's mechanism is not likely to succeed where the costly signalling approach fails. Second, Wheeler's take on the reassuring properties of summits is incomplete. Summits may foster suspicion as well as trust. Untrustworthy leaders may go to summits as well as trustworthy ones. Indeed, untrustworthy actors may deliberately choose to go to summits: first, because a refusal to go might mark them as untrustworthy; and second, because it affords them an opportunity to try to deceive the other side into lowering their guard, so they can be taken advantage of later on. The Munich conference is the obvious example of this. In some cases this deceit works and the other side is fooled, if only temporarily. In other cases it fails, and the summit ends in rancour as the other side receives indices of the untrustworthy nature of the bad actor. While Wheeler acknowledges these possibilities, he does not focus on them, even going so far as to assume that the participants in summits are peacefully motivated. This assumption takes away the entire dilemma of reassurance as well as the real possibility that the other side may be untrustworthy. This dilemma exists no less in summits than in the interpretation of costly signals. A third point is that face-to-face diplomacy by individuals below the national leader is ubiquitous, even between adversaries, but trust is much less so. The US and the Soviet Union maintained embassies in each other's countries during the Cold War, as did all the European states before each of the world wars. Ambassadors met foreign ministers, foreign ministers met each other, prime ministers held conferences and, in olden days, royalty rubbed elbows at spas and regattas. Wheeler's theory would seem to imply that trust should have been widespread between all these individuals, having received indices of each other's trustworthiness at face-to-face meetings. And yet war broke out periodically. Were ambassadors unable to persuade their superiors that their interlocutors were trustworthy? Did they not think so themselves? Does the logic only apply to leaders? Finally, the concept of trust as suspension, in which actors ‘bond’ or share identities and no longer entertain the idea that the other side might be untrustworthy, is a very deep level of trust. So deep that it seems somewhat rare in international relations, particularly among states that start from a position of enmity. Certainly leaders of allies and friendly neighbours, such as the US and Canada, may no longer entertain the possibility of the use of force against each other, and so have a deep level of trust, along with shared identities as ‘western’ or ‘democratic’ states. Even in the EU, however, which includes the densest institutions in the world, accompanied by face-to-face interactions at all levels of government, this shared identity is currently subject to renewed contestation. Given this, it is difficult to envision such a level of trust developing quickly as a result of a few summit meetings between leaders of states with serious conflicts of interest that have generated a real risk of war, including North and South Korea and India and Pakistan. While we can posit a spectrum of trust from deep distrust, to moderate distrust, to neutrality, to moderate trust and to deep trust, the urgent need is to get states from deep distrust to moderate distrust, and then to neutrality, because that greatly reduces the risk of war. Getting from there to deep trust is nice, but not necessary to avoid nuclear devastation. Moreover, if the current wave of populism is any evidence, it is a rare and fragile achievement in international relations. These points are meant to stimulate debate and suggest avenues for future research. They do not detract from the significance of Wheeler's book as there is no question of the importance of leaders and face-to-face diplomacy. The book fits in with an emerging literature by scholars such as Marcus Holmes, Michael C. Horowitz, Keren Yarhi-Milo and Robert Trager. It is a very promising vein to be mined, both theoretically and empirically, and Wheeler has significantly advanced the debate. Can you trust a politician? By focusing on the role of trust in peacemaking, Nicholas Wheeler brings together two persistent and perplexing issues, one largely theoretical and the other more policy-related. The former concerns the role of personality and interpersonal relations in international affairs, while the latter is about how hostile states can work to overcome their differences. They come together because there is no more challenging issue for interpersonal relations than overcoming enmity. In this review I want to concentrate on the policy issue. The book is strongly focused on the theoretical side and provides a thorough and intricate analysis of how these matters are handled in the International Relations literature and of the variety of ways in which states might overcome intense differences, such as signalling theory. This is one of those areas where historians, and even casual observers, wonder what the issue is. Other than in the rarefied world of some political scientists, it is self-evident that personalities make a difference in all areas of human affairs and that different leaders approach similar problems in different ways. Developing (or losing) trust tends to be a feature of all important relationships. It is not just relevant to getting over enmity. Even between apparent allies, even in the same government, there will be issues about who is ‘keeping their word’ or apt to ‘stab you in the back’ or ‘sell out’. The reason why trust is always an issue in political life is not because politicians have inherently untrustworthy personalities, but because they are subject to multiple pressures and must deal at the same time with many and often cross-cutting issues. They must cope with the pressure of events, niggling technicalities, legal restraints, regular elections and constant media attention. In the effort to keep as many people on side as possible they may start fudging, dissembling and procrastinating. If a political leader is relying on another's good faith, then disappointment is always likely. Everything needs to be seen in context. These multiple pressures need to be kept in mind when considering how trust can be developed and sustained. Even in the best of circumstances—despite good intentions and a relationship of established trust—one actor may let down another because a third actor is more important and powerful. In particular, when seeking to establish a relationship of trust with the leader of another government—especially one normally spoken of as hostile and menacing—it will still be necessary to assure key figures at home that they can be trusted not to make outrageous concessions. In this respect, strong autocratic leaders have an advantage in that they have more latitude. Therefore, Wheeler is right to stress that developing a new type of positive relationship will take time as the two leaders will need to be able to bond. A bonding process requires special conditions, however. It cannot be done with a quick chat in the margins of some large international gathering. It requires regular summits with whatever is in dispute dominating the agenda. Wheeler argues that as the leaders spend time together they may come to appreciate each other's humanity. This is—to state the obvious—not a guaranteed result. Leaving aside the underlying political and even cultural differences, it is perfectly possible for one leader to find another insensitive, ignorant, boorish or, alternatively, too easily impressed and therefore willing to make concessions that will be difficult to sell back home. A lot depends therefore on the characters involved. So, in the end, Wheeler's focus is on quite a narrow set of circumstances: a high-profile conflict which political leaders are determined and able to address even if it takes time. This approach, precisely because it takes time, is only suitable for certain sorts of conflicts: those already shown to be dangerous without actually having led to excessive violence. If the two sides are already at war there may be an urgent need for peacemaking, but this will require third party mediators. At the other end of the scale, the same approach is going to be far less relevant for disputes which are less important, must compete for attention with other pressing issues and to which political leaders will not devote sufficient attention. It is therefore not surprising that Wheeler acknowledges that the inspiration for his book lies with the United States–Soviet Union summits of 1985–8, held between President Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, which were the prelude to the end of the Cold War. Wheeler's depiction of the interaction between the two men is masterful. It shows that a better relationship does not lead naturally to agreement, but that it can lead to an improved understanding. For example, in November 1986, Gorbachev decided against denouncing Reagan for losing the great disarmament opportunities of the Reykjavik Summit and insisted on sticking with his pet project, the strategic defence initiative. This shows that what was most important was not that the two men appreciated each other as human beings, but that they appreciated each other as politicians, understanding the various pressures to which they were being subjected at home and their constrained room for manoeuvre. This helps make it possible to identify what might be done to defuse tensions or reach agreements. What is important is that they understand their interlocutors not just as human beings but as political beings. The point can be made by looking at another summit between American and Soviet leaders, that between President John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev. Their only meeting ended up aggravating the Berlin Crisis. Khrushchev had a low opinion of the US president but also knew that the Soviet Union was not as strong as Kennedy probably believed and as Khrushchev insisted. He therefore worked at getting the upper hand. Yet Khrushchev's solution to the developing crisis was to build the Berlin Wall, which left the city divided and east Germans locked in. As this avoided a crisis over the position of west Berlin, Kennedy tacitly accepted this outcome. Equally, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy tried as hard as he could to understand the pressures on Khrushchev, including assuming that he had to cope with his own military hawks. In the end the crisis was managed. What was evident in Kennedy's thinking was what Wheeler describes as ‘security dilemma sensibility’, that is, the ability to see how your actions might inadvertently increase another's sense of insecurity. It therefore might be easier to trust another politician qua politician than qua human being, because the sources of disappointment are as likely to be the result of political complications as human failings. After all, bonding is about revising perceptions of the conflict. These perceptions, including how trustworthy individual leaders have been in the past, can be shaped by particular events. For example, Wheeler notes that the murder of the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, in a NATO-backed rebellion seven years after he had been persuaded to abandon his nuclear programme, may have influenced thinking in Tehran and Pyongyang. This was even though NATO's intervention was not the result of bad faith but of changing circumstances and was prompted by the imminent massacre of Libyan rebels in Benghazi. At any rate, there is no reason to suppose that North Korea ever intended to give up its nuclear capability. In this regard, Wheeler gives much credit to US President Jimmy Carter's personal intervention, which involved a face-to-face meeting with North Korean leader Kim Il-sung. This certainly helped defuse the crisis, but it also let North Korea off the hook. I would also add that Carter placed far too much store in personal relationships, leading to even greater disillusionment with Leonid Brezhnev over Afghanistan than might otherwise have been the case. This is relevant when we move on to the present day. It is not clear how President Donald Trump fits into Wheeler's theory. This is a man who clearly believes in personal diplomacy and has no compunction about meeting with leaders of countries considered hostile to the United States. Some argue he prefers them to allies. He has a high opinion of himself which he seeks to impress on others. He claims breakthroughs that did not happen, including boasting of making peace after the Singapore summit with Kim Jong-un—which was a fantasy. Such claims could create risks, as it becomes evident that there was no agreement on the US demands for denuclearization. The Korean episode also illustrates the pitfalls of summitry between democratic and autocratic leaders. In general, we can work out where democratic leaders are coming from politically—Trump is challenging in this regard—but we know far less about what is going in capitals such as Pyongyang. Wheeler makes a strong case for leaders to work at their relationships with each other, to see their counterparts in human terms and then see what can be done to turn better personal relationships into better interstate relationships. But I am less sure whether it is wise to see other leaders first and foremost as human beings rather than political beings. The theory of bonding trust in international conflict: a reply to the reviewers∗ As Lawrence Freedman notes in his contribution to this forum, my inspiration for Trusting enemies was the interpersonal trust that developed between US and Soviet leaders Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in the second half of the 1980s. I argue that trust between the two leaders emerged out of a process of interpersonal bonding that was critically engendered by an iterative process of face-to-face diplomacy. The relationship of what I call ‘bonded trust’ between the two leaders was a critical enabling condition of the peaceful transformation of US–Soviet relations. Trusting enemies develops a theory of how trust of this kind can emerge between two leaders who represent states that previously interacted as enemies and how this new-found interpersonal trust can lead to the settlement of conflicts at the interstate level. Put boldly, interpersonal trust makes this possible because it creates the greatest likelihood of leaders accurately interpreting each other's signals, thereby removing the ambiguity of signal interpretation. Although some of the contributors to this forum draw attention to the narrowness and limitations of this particular focus on trust, it remains the case, as Christian Reus-Smit points out in his introduction to the forum, that building trust between two enemies is not only the most difficult arena for the development of trust, but also one which remains urgently pressing in an era of nuclear weapons (p. 1431 in this forum). From the rich arguments presented in this forum, I have divided my reply into the following five sections: the assumption of peaceful intent that underpins the book's theory; the theory of bonded trust and accurate signal interpretation; the claims of trust as suspension; state leaders as human beings or political beings; and how President Donald Trump fits into the theory. The assumption of peaceful intent A key assumption underpinning the book's trust-based theory of accurate signal interpretation is that signals can be assumed to be sent by leaders with peaceful intent. I argue that ‘state leaders have peaceful intent if they believe that their core security goals can be achieved without requiring the threat or use of force against another state, and that they will reciprocate cooperative moves on the part of that state’ (Trusting enemies, p. 17). In Kydd's pithy terminology, the theory depends on state leaders—the key referent for trust in the book—having ‘assurance game’ and not ‘prisoner's dilemma’ preferences (Trust and mistrust in International Relations). This leads to a critical conclusion which Kydd draws out in his contribution to this forum, namely, that my approach is ‘incapable of fostering reassurance between leaders imbued with enemy images’ (p. 1437 in this forum). This is a fair criticism, but it is open to two important rejoinders. The first is that the book is not trying to explain how actors can transition from prisoner's dilemma to assurance game preferences, and it is not evident that any existing theory can satisfactorily explain this. In her contribution, Deborah Welch Larson takes me to task for not recognizing that there are other pathways to trust than the interpersonal, and one that she singles out is Charles Osgood's strategy of GRIT (p. 1434 in this forum). However, GRIT is also predicated on the assumption that both sides have peaceful intent, but neither adversary has hitherto been successful in communicating this because of the persistence of ‘enemy images’ on both sides. GRIT prescribes that one side should seek to break the deadlock by making a series of unilateral low risk moves. I agree with Larson that this can have some positive effects, but the historical record admits of no case where GRIT has led to the kind of ‘spiral of trust’ envisaged by Osgood. The second reply is that there is a mechanism in the theory of ‘bonding trust’ by which two leaders who previously held enemy images can come to promote mutual reassurance and that is the exercise of what has been called ‘security dilemma sensibility’. This can be defined as a leader's ‘intention and capacity … to understand the role that fear might play in their attitudes and behaviour, including, crucially, the role that one's own actions may play in provoking that fear’. The exercise of security dilemma sensibility is a crucial first move in any process of trust-building between two adversaries. It predisposes state leaders to the possibility that an adversary might—if they are also exercising security dilemma sensibility—be potentially trustworthy. Of course, there are no guarantees here and, as Kydd points out, untrustworthy leaders may feign trustworthiness at summits to lull an opponent into a false sense of security (pp. 1437–8 in this forum). But it is precisely because of ‘the real possibility that the other side may be untrustworthy’—what Kydd calls the ‘dilemma of reassurance’—that it is vital to test out the other's trustworthiness through face-to-face interaction. This is because it enables decision-makers on both sides to learn whether the other is exercising security dilemma sensibility in relation to the conflict. In this regard, the mutual exercise of security dilemma sensibility is the point at which a relationship has transitioned from what Kydd in this forum calls ‘deep’ or ‘moderate’ distrust to a position of neutrality (p. 1438 in this forum). It is neutral because actors are seeking to test their developing intuition that an adversary might be acting out of fear and not malign intent. Trust and accurate signal interpretation In her contribution to this forum, Larson queries the claim that (bonded) trust is causally prior to accurate signal interpretation. In relation to the Reagan–Gorbachev case, Larson suggests that it required Gorbachev's prior actions—such as agreeing to cut Soviet strategic forces by 50 per cent and the acceptance of onsite inspections in the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty—for Reagan to trust Gorbachev. However, these so-called ‘costly signals’ on the part of Gorbachev only became possible because of the trust that developed between Reagan and Gorbachev through their face-to-face interactions, first in Geneva in November 1985 and then, crucially, at the Reykjavik summit in October 1986. Gorbachev had made earlier unilateral cooperative moves in 1985, after assuming the leadership of the Soviet Union, such as a testing moratorium and nuclear disarmament pledges. However, these GRIT-like moves had been dismissed as ‘cheap talk’ by US policy-makers as it was, understandably, reasoned that they could just as easily have been sent by untrustworthy actors. They were not seen to communicate any important information about Gorbachev's intentions. Consequently, what has to be explained is how Gorbachev came to send the costlier signals noted by Larson in the period 1986–7. From a GRIT perspective, Gorbachev should not have made these bolder moves because there had been no US reciprocation of his earlier signals and so no consequent decrease in costs and risks. Some analysts have tried to explain this puzzle of Gorbachev's costly signalling by pointing to his conception of Soviet security which led him not to believe that the West was a strategic threat. Others have focused on Soviet weakness and the concessions this compelled on the Soviet side. As I show in Trusting enemies, these explanations contribute to a fuller understanding of how US–Soviet enmity was dissolved, but it is a key empirical argument of the book that any plausible explanation must include the interpersonal trust that emerged between Reagan and Gorbachev. Trust as suspension Perhaps the most controversial claim I make in Trusting enemies concerns the idea that ‘trust as suspension’ can exist at the international level. As Reus-Smit points out, objections to this argument take two forms. First, Larson contends that trust as suspension is not trust because it does away with the element of risk that she sees as indispensable to the concept of trust. Second, although Kydd accepts that suspension might be a form of trust, he argues that it should not be expected to develop between enemies like India and Pakistan or North and South Korea. Turning to Larson's criticism first, she writes that ‘if one does not even entertain the thought that the other could cheat or betray … then arguably trust is not involved’ (p. 1435 in this forum). However, Larson's criticism overlooks the distinction that I draw in the book between the subjective views of a leader—who inhabits a mental space of suspension with respect to the trustworthiness of another leader, as a result of the personal bond that has formed between them—and the objective possibility of betrayal that is always present in trusting relationships. State leaders who have entered a mental state of suspension as a result of a process of social bonding are conscious that they are trusting. At the same time though, they are not subjectively conscious that they experience vulnerability and risk by trusting in the intent and integrity of another state leader. I am not arguing that leaders are unaware of the possibility of their trust being broken, but what is crucial is that they do not factor this into their risk calculations vis-à-vis the intent and integrity of the other leader. In contrast to Larson, Kydd accepts that suspension is a form of trust, but questions its applicability to enemy relationships, which are the key focus of the book. The first point to make here is that the theory of bonding trust developed in Trusting enemies is a theory of interpersonal relations and I make no claim that suspension can exist between states. Rather, trust as suspension develops between individuals through a process of social bonding and this enables new possibilities for resolving interstate conflicts. Kydd states in this forum that it is difficult to imagine the ‘deep trust’ of suspension developing in conflicts such as between India and Pakistan. However, in the aftermath of both countries' nuclear tests, Indian and Pakistani leaders were—through an iterative process of face-to-face interaction—able to reach the point of what I call ‘identity transformation’, where two leaders inhabit a mental state of suspension in relation to the intent and integrity of the other. That said, Vajpayee's trust in Sharif was broken when the latter failed to stop the Pakistani military from launching an attack across the Line of Control against Indian positions at Kargil. State leaders as human beings or political beings Freedman argues that nurturing relationships of trust requires leaders to appreciate each other's domestic constraints that limit their freedom of manoeuvre—the role of a third actor like the Pakistani military. However, it is important to distinguish between leaders having a sensitivity to the limits of the possible in relation to a counterpart's domestic situation and their lack of political capacity, as in the case of Sharif, to live up to the trust that another leader has placed in them. Freedman gives the example of Gorbachev's decision not to publicly blame Reagan's stubborn attachment to the strategic defence initiative for the failure at Reykjavik when the two leaders came very close to an agreement on nuclear disarmament. This shows, Freedman argues, that ‘what was most important was not that the two men appreciated each other as human beings, but that they appreciated each other as politicians’. Freedman's reference to ‘human beings’ mirrors my claim that ‘humanization’ is one of the key components of the process of social bonding in interpersonal interaction. I agree with Freedman that it is important that state leaders and top-level policy-makers ‘understand their interlocutors not just as human beings but as political beings’ (p. 1440 in this forum). However, in the case of Gorbachev's decision not to blame Reagan over the failure of Reykjavik, what mattered was his determination to maintain the deep trust—to use Kydd's term—that he had built with Reagan in Iceland. Meeting each other as human beings was essential to the process of interpersonal bonding that led both leaders to inhabit a mental state of trust as suspension. How President Donald Trump fits into the theory As Freedman notes, Trump is clearly a believer in the power of personal diplomacy, as evidenced by his willingness to meet Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin at summits in Singapore and Helsinki respectively. Trump has also lambasted his predecessors for lacking the ‘chemistry’ to achieve a breakthrough with Russian leaders. As Freedman points out, Trump claimed that he had achieved a breakthrough with Kim in Singapore that would lead to North Korea denuclearizing. Given the highly unlikely possibility of the latter occurring, there is a risk that Trump will come to feel that Kim has played him, leading to a backlash by Trump against Kim that increases the risks of war on the Korean peninsula. Though such a deterioration in relations between Kim and Trump might seem unlikely while Trump claims he and Kim ‘have developed a very special bond’ and that they trust each other. But it is hard to gauge to what extent Trump really believes this—let alone his recent brag that, as a result of their face-to-face meeting and subsequent letters, he and Kim ‘fell in love’. The great value of face-to-face interaction is that it enables leaders and diplomats to read each other's trustworthiness, but it also creates an opening for leaders to fake their trustworthiness by faking bonds. As Kydd notes, untrustworthy leaders go to summits too. How far Kim and Putin are manipulating Trump by faking their admiration for him are questions that are not easily answerable. It is hard, given his presidential style, to believe Trump is exercising security dilemma sensibility in relation to the North Koreans, but it is worth remembering that he has accompanied his talk of a ‘special bond’ with the controversial decision to postpone the US–South Korea annual military exercises as an apparent measure of reassurance towards North Korea. It is easy to dismiss Trump's words about the importance of personal bonds as empty rhetoric, but if Trump and Kim and Trump and Putin develop relationships of deep trust then game-changing possibilities may open up for ending interstate enmities between the United States and North Korea and between the United States and Russia. ∗ I want to first express my gratitude to International Affairs for organizing this forum. I owe a special thanks to Krisztina Csortea for suggesting the idea of a forum and to Christian Reus-Smit for inviting the contributors and writing the introduction. I appreciate Andrew Kydd, Deborah Welch Larson and Lawrence Freedman taking the time to engage with the text in such a generous and challenging way, and for inviting me to clarify and develop key ideas in the book. © The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Royal Institute of International Affairs.
TI - Trusting enemies: interpersonal relationships in international conflict
JF - International Affairs
DO - 10.1093/ia/iiy229
DA - 2018-11-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/trusting-enemies-interpersonal-relationships-in-international-conflict-afp7DdBYGX
SP - 1431
VL - 94
IS - 6
DP - DeepDyve
ER -