Chapter Six looks at the role of international law in the Trump administration State Department. Former policymakers gave their opinion on the extent of the effect of the Trump administration on State Department policymaking and discussed potential long-term effects. The Trump administration generally displayed a negative view toward international law, institutions, and agreements, as evidenced by its words and in its actions, a view at odds with the prevailing State Department culture. More significantly, the Trump administration took unusual steps to stifle dissent within the State Department. Former officials expressed a range of perceptions regarding the Trump administration’s effect on the State Department. A minority believed that the administration’s views and actions significantly affected attitudes and practices within the Department regarding international law and institutions. The majority believed that effects on attitudes were more likely to be felt at the policy-decision level, rather than at the lower, policy development level. That is, attitudes among rank-and-file and career State Department officials probably remained unchanged and were likely to “bounce back” after the 2020 election. Nevertheless, a reprise of the Trump administration, or a similar administration, could ultimately affect not only practices at the State Department but attitudes among officials as well.

Introduction

The Gulf region, comprising the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states – namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – Iran, and Iraq, has come to acquire a place of prominence in India's foreign policy and international relations over the last three decades. A number of factors, including the post–Cold War shift in Indian foreign policy, growing trade and financial remittances, energy security, and a converging threat perception of transnational terrorism, are responsible for the change. This is a far cry from the decades of the Cold War when, despite the geographic proximity and historical linkages, the region was peripheral to India's foreign policy and was viewed through the prism of solidarity among the postcolonial states. This had resulted in India's Middle East policy becoming initially Cairo-centric and later revolving around Baghdad. The non-alignment policy and the preoccupation with Pakistan meant vital regional countries, namely Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, remained on the periphery of India's Middle East policy during much of the Cold War era.

The end of the Cold War, disintegration of the Soviet Union, and domestic economic compulsions forced India to begin a gradual shift in its foreign policy, and simultaneously, India's Gulf and Middle East policy witnessed a change. The need for foreign economic partners and energy security concerns led New Delhi to reach out to the Gulf countries, especially Oman and Iran, and at the same time, Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao took the bold step to normalize relations with Israel to adjust to the changing global order. Despite the shift, the idea of non-alignment continued to remain central to India's foreign policy discourse – and even at times its foreign policy conduct – with the concept of strategic autonomy acquiring importance.8 The discussions on India's engagement with the world, including the Middle East, continued to revolve around non-alignment, as underlined in the report Nonalignment 2.0 – published in 2012 – which articulated the need for India to adopt strategic autonomy and balancing as the abiding principles of its international engagement.9

Although India's foreign policy debates displayed extraordinary sensitivity to alliance-building as violating the principles of non-alignment and strategic autonomy, in practice, however, New Delhi had begun to shift to a policy of multi-alignment soon after the 1998 nuclear tests over which India faced international condemnation.

In this concluding chapter, the authors summarize the findings of the volume’s contributions and further develop the notion of the Weimar analogy as providing central clues about conceptions of modernity in the postwar era. It further emphasizes the multiple ways in which Weimar has been mobilized in different contexts, how it has worked as a cultural symbol, and why it has had such a profound impact on postwar political thinking in the West. The chapter, finally, expands on what we may take away from the studies in this volume for a more general understanding of the role of analogies and historical lessons for political thought.

This chapter sets the scene for an appreciation of the contemporary relationship between the Court and the Commission by tracing its roots in the broader ideal of the pacific settlement of disputes and the rule of law in international affairs. Taking stock of developments dating back to the nineteenth century, it illustrates that the long-standing movements for an international court and for an international code were not unrelated, and that a certain vision did exist for the way in which their present institutional manifestations were to interact. That original vision, which has been lost in time, has thus far attracted less attention from commentators than its importance requires.

This introductory chapter explains the scope and purpose of the present study; the methodology pursued; and the structure of argument presented in subsequent chapters.

This book is about three things. First, it explores whether, why, and how states comply with international law, focusing on the United States and the factors that affect state calculations. Second, it examines the culture, structure, and processes of the State Department and their effect on the role of international law considerations in shaping State Department decision-making. Finally, it investigates the effect of the Trump administration and its views about international law on the culture and processes of the State Department, as well as the likely effect of a similar administration in the future. To help address these questions, seventy-seven high-level former State Department officials were interviewed, as well as a handful of former high-level attorneys in the Office of the Legal Adviser.

This chapter explores the origins and consequences of national security institutions in the People’s Republic of China during the tenure of Mao Zedong. It first explains the political logic behind Mao’s choice to shift from integrated to fragmented institutions: Mao chose to weaken the bureaucracy to ensure a stable political succession after his death. It then presents a medium-n analysis to show how this shift from integrated to fragmented institutions degraded China’s crisis performance. Detailed process tracing of two cases illustrates how different institutional designs shaped crisis performance through poor bureaucratic information provision at the onset of each crisis. Prior to the 1962 Taiwan Strait Crisis, Mao’s decision-making benefitted from high-quality bureaucratic information that comparatively inclusive and open institutions afforded. By the onset of the 1969 Sino-Soviet Border conflict, however, Mao was forced to make decisions based on incomplete and biased information provided by bureaucrats who feared Mao’s retribution. The chapter thus illustrates how institutional changes can dramatically change the quality of information upon which the same leader bases their choice of conflict.

This chapter presents an institutional theory of miscalculation on the road to war. The central proposition is that leaders face a trade-off between good information and political security. This trade-off is discussed in two parts. The chapter first discusses the informational constraints faced by leaders contemplating beginning an international crisis, explaining why integrated institutions that feature inclusive and open information flows tend to deliver better information to leaders. The chapter then discusses the political logic by which many leaders choose to forgo integrated institutions in favor of institutional alternatives that deliver less complete and less accurate information but provide political protection from bureaucratic punishment.

Chapter Two summarizes the compliance literature on international relations and international law, addressing both theoretical and empirical work. This literature can be divided into two groups: The first group explores why states comply with international law and is generally associated with the primary schools of international relations theory. The study may confirm or illustrate the applicability of aspects of one or more of these theories, although that is not necessary for it to be valuable in illuminating the motivations that affect policymakers and states. The second group within the compliance literature examines more closely how states comply at the domestic level and focuses on domestic policymaking within the United States government. In this regard, the chapter concentrates on two similar normative and process-oriented approaches. The first, the international legal process approach, is drawn from international legal scholarship; the second is primarily drawn from constructivist international relations theory, and was developed primarily by Wayne Sandholtz and Christopher Whytock, among others. Both approaches emphasize the role of internalized norms and the importance of process and organizational structure in decision-making. They are, accordingly, helpful in understanding the effect of legal norms, lawyers, and process in State Department decision-making.

This chapter explores the origins and consequences of national security institution in India from 1947 to 2015. It first discusses the evolution of India’s institutions. It argues that the trade-off between good information and political security explains three major institutional changes: Nehru’s choice to abandon his inherited institutions in favor of fragmented ones that protected his plans to transform the domestic economy; the choice of post-Nehruvian leaders to shift toward siloed institutions that balanced continued threats from national security bureaucracies against new international security challenges from Pakistan and China; and Vajpayee’s choice to establish more integrated institutions as apprehensions about bureaucratic punishment lessened. The chapter then presents a medium-n analysis suggesting that India exhibited better crisis performance under integrated institutions than under siloed and fragmented institutions. Case studies tracing decision-making during the 1962 Sino–Indian War and the 2001-2002 Twin Peaks Crisis illustrate how these institutional changes affected the quality of information upon which Indian leaders based their crisis choices.