Scholarly Contributions | International Relations Theory

US FOREIGN POLICY

Professor Said’s contributions to the field of international relations extend beyond theory to include active engagement in the practice of international politics. Based in Washington, DC, he was particularly well positioned to actively engage in US foreign policy. Said’s decades-long career as a public diplomat, with frequent official and informal exchanges with US government officials and foreign leaders influenced both his critiques of traditional US policy approaches and his recommendations for what to do differently. Ultimately, he recognized great potential for the US to exemplify a new style of leadership, one that prioritizes cooperation rooted in a shared moral consensus, cultural pluralism, and flexibility within a rapidly changing world.

Said’s engagements within policymaking spaces shaped his scholarly contributions just as his scholarship influenced the nature of these engagements. One key contribution to the study and practice of foreign policy is his centering of values, morality, and an understanding of cultural context. These themes appeared from his earliest writings and continued to develop throughout his work. In Concepts of International Politics, Said and Charles Lerche, Jr. define foreign policy as “a society’s attempt to realize on the international plane certain notions of what it conceives as good.”¹ The social values determining what is good or evil are seldom self-evident, but arise from a particular sociopolitical culture. Governments are obliged to structure at least some of their international efforts to reflect the value preferences of their people. Said also argued that collective moral judgement – such as the emergence of an international moral consensus that led to numerous human rights conventions – is now a factor that US policymakers must consider.² This idea stood in stark contrast to the mainstream assumption, rooted in the doctrine of national sovereignty, that foreign policy has no necessary connection to an absolute or universal moral code.

Likewise, in the introduction to his edited volume on America’s World Role in the 70s, Said critiqued the scholarly analysis of the time that relied on abstract theories, noting that “the concept of value-free analysis has not served U.S. policy makers well.”³ Rather, “security is too much a part of human life to be placed in a vacuum free of human values.”⁴ During the years of the Cold War, Said was concerned with how the US positioned itself as “the champion of freedom against the nefarious force of communism” while demonstrating “blatant disregard for worldwide political and cultural peculiarities.”⁵ Amidst the rise in revolutionary movements and continued emergence of non-Western states in the international system, US attempts “to maintain stability at the expense of suppressing human expectations has resulted in more instability.”⁶ Said instead urged US foreign policy makers to make “a rational assessment of the sources of revolution, and a framework of response that lacks the paranoia and ideological obsession that have been our customary reactions.”⁷ In his edited volume Revolutionism with Daniel M. Collier, Said similarly stressed “a realistic rather than an ideological approach”⁸ to understand the conditions driving revolutions and urged a more flexible approach in formulating policy rather than maintaining “stability qua stability” as a value for its own sake.⁹

During this period Said also drew attention to the significant implications on foreign policy of the global drug trade, and the need to consider the complex relationships between drug production, corruption, and violence.¹⁰ In addition, he was keenly interested in the impact of culture and identity in global politics, arguing that policymakers must take into account the continued emergence of subcultures that transcend national borders¹¹ and the complex relationships among different ethnic groups that impact international relations.¹²

Said’s work went beyond a critique of current US foreign policy, however. He also provided a bold vision of a new world order and role for the US. This emerging global system is more complex and pluralistic and has a “crude but vital form of international egalitarianism” as newly established states enter and seek to reorder the traditional world political system.¹³ The world is anxious for a new type of leader, according to Said, which the US has the potential to be. The most powerful weapon of US policymakers is not subversion or military or development aid but rather the “powerful transnational conscience, deeply rooted in the dreams of justice and freedom of all peoples, for all people.”¹⁴ The end of the Cold War furthered Said’s argument for a new type of US leadership, as the US had now “lost its purpose” for a strong stance against communist aggression. What is now needed is leadership based on a broadly held moral consensus. While realists argue that such a stance is naïve or short sighted, Said points out that we have little choice to resist or deny it: “the emerging global order will either learn to live with mass opinion or it will not survive.”¹⁵ Aligned with contemporary critical security studies and human security approaches, Said argued that systems that are interdependent carry the promise of a durable security: “enhanced security for one state requires improved security for all.”¹⁶ Indeed, “it is no longer accurate to speak of the West as sharply distinct from the East, or even to speak of the North as opposed to the South.”¹⁷ In particular, Said urged the US to play a role in developing a cooperative global politics by helping to form common goals and the mechanisms for cooperation and coordination.¹⁸

While Said was contributing bold ideas to the scholarship on US foreign policy, he was also actively engaged in public diplomacy and as a citizen diplomat. Early in his career he worked with US Defense Department officials, preparing several reports on the Middle East, Africa, and NATO. He also traveled throughout the world giving lectures on US foreign policy for the US State Department and other government agencies as well as charitable foundations, and was often invited to meet with high-level government officials such as foreign ministers. Said also lectured at every US military academy, forging relationships with senior military officials who often sought his advice, especially on the Middle East (see also US Foreign Policy in the Middle East and Africa). These exchanges exposed him to a diversity of perspectives that informed his scholarship and practice.

Although often discussing issues of global concern, Said was especially focused on the Middle East and North Africa. In the 1990s in the midst of growing ethnic and sectarian conflict across the region, Said encouraged US policymakers to support the processes of change instead of continuing their status quo approach, urging approaches that minimize violence.¹⁹ Writing in 1996 with Professor Nathan Funk about the Israeli-Palestinian and Arab-Israeli peace processes, Said warned that US misunderstandings of regional movements are detrimental: “the very real despair of many Arabs and Muslims – particularly of the oppressed and exploited – perpetuates the attractiveness of a fundamentalist alternative which, when marginalized politically or placed under heavy pressure … can give rise to violence.”²⁰

Professor Said was also a regular advisor to the State Department on the region, including on Syria, Tunisia, and Arab-Israeli negotiations. Given his own background that bridged the East and West, many of his efforts focused on bringing multiple perspectives to the table and bridging the “cultural understanding gap”²¹ that he saw among many Western scholars and policymakers. Working with diplomats, peacebuilding practitioners, and activists on multiple sides of a conflict, Said aimed to help them engage more effectively with each other and support confidence-building measures, relaying information in a way that would increase receptivity.²² In an article with his wife, Elena Turner, Said writes that, “the exchange between Westerners and Muslims is reduced to mutual recrimination. Communication between the two is becoming an exercise in futility.”²³ Yet, “there must be a new beginning. The West and the East need to meet again, on different ground that is devoid of arrogance and fanaticism but closer to the roots of Judeo-Christian-Muslim-traditions.”²⁴ Acknowledging the power dynamics among these actors, Said urged the US to take the initiative because it is in a more secure place to do so.

Said also drew important connections between US domestic and foreign policy since increased global interdependence also means that “world problems can be confronted on the micro level.”²⁵ In his 2006 publication Bridges not Barriers, Said clarified that the US “can and should still play a vital role, but more of a supporting role, more the role of a team player.”²⁶ The US should focus on pressing domestic issues that inevitably have a global impact. In particular, “the best foreign policy for the United States is a dynamic and creative process that overcomes the growing gap between the rich and the poor in American society, one that makes sure everyone has good medical care and education.”²⁷ Such an approach would be “a model for the world.”²⁸ Ultimately, according to Said, the US is facing two possible pathways. As he outlined in a 2009 article, the first is “America the Strong,” which stems from traditional realist thinking and is motivated by fear. Pursuing its own interests and security at the expense of others, this path is ultimately short-sighted and “dooms itself and the world to perpetual insecurity.”²⁹ Said encourages the US to instead pursue the path of “America the Brave,” which can contribute to shaping a “world order based on consensus and cooperation as opposed to domination and coercion.” This path “relies on the courage to make short-term, unilateral concessions to ensure long-term global stability.” Its leadership relies on respect and motivation of others toward a common purpose and destiny.³⁰

Said remained forward thinking in his later writings, considering the future of international relations in a 2013 paper. Predicting that broader issues of politics such as poverty, the environment, human rights, and democratization will remain priorities over the next century, “what will shift is the significance which we assign to these issues and how we resolve them.” It is the subjective situation that changes our frames of reference influenced by our values and ideas. In particular, he pointed to the role of media in shaping the context in which political events take place: “ultimately the political struggle of the twenty-first century will be to seize the new strategic territory of that era: air time.”³¹ Said continued to publish both scholarly articles and op-eds on US foreign policy, give lectures, and advise US and international diplomats and peacebuilding advocates until his retirement in 2015, focusing significantly on the Syrian conflict that began in 2011 (see Conflict Resolution). Indeed, his call for cooperative foreign policy approaches within an increasingly interdependent world is perhaps more relevant today than ever before.

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