Toward a Fresh Foreign Policy
How a simple 'J curve' can help policymakers open up closed regimes
A state's "stability" has two crucial components: its capacity to withstand shocks and its ability to avoid producing them. A nation is unstable only if neither is present. Some states-North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Burma-are stable precisely because a small governing elite has isolated them from the political, economic, and cultural forces now reshaping the global landscape. Greater public exposure to information from the outside world will, over time, push the most rigid of these states toward dangerous instability. Other states-Canada, Spain, Sweden-are stable because they are continually reinvigorated by political and social change. Their citizens-and international investors-know that political conflicts will be peacefully resolved by institutions that are independent of one another.
For a country that is stable because it is closed to become a country that is stable because it is open, it must pass through the dip in the J curve-a transitional period of dangerous instability. Some states, like South Africa, survive the passage. Others, like Yugoslavia or the Soviet Union, do not. These transitions are now more treacherous than ever. In a world of lightning-fast capital flight, social unrest, weapons of mass destruction, and transnational terrorism, the potential for state failure is everybody's business. Countries on the right side of the J curve have a collective interest in helping to move left-side states through instability to the right side of the curve. But they must recognize that the most powerful agents for constructive, sustainable change in any society are the people who live within it. Strategies that empower citizens to challenge the authoritarian status quo can create strong momentum for democratic change.
In the short term, a concerted push for far-reaching political reform should be made only in those states that have a fighting chance of surviving the depths of the J curve. If a country unprepared for such instability falls (or is pushed) into the dip in the curve, the outcome can be calamitous. The daily challenges facing U.S. troops in Iraq make the point.
But Washington should support incremental progress toward the opening of isolated states. Democracy can come to an authoritarian state only when its people demand it. U.S. policymakers should find every way possible to feed this demand.
Copyright 2006 by Ian Bremmer, from the forthcoming book The J Curve: A New Way to Understand Why Nations Rise and Fall (Simon & Schuster)
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