The first thing Bremmer does is remind us that building a democracy is not easy:
To build democracy in a state with little or no democratic history is the work of decades—and it can’t be done on the cheap. To invest considerable human, political and financial capital in support of the construction of democracy in places like Iraq and Afghanistan simultaneously, as if national elections and good police work will create an inexpensive and self-sustaining momentum toward stable political pluralism, is foolhardy.He then lays out his thesis:
To understand why this is so, consider the relationship between a state’s stability and its “openness.” A country’s stability is a measure of its government’s capacity to implement policy in the event of a political, social or economic crisis. Openness is a measure of the degree to which people, ideas, information, goods and services flow freely in both directions across the state’s borders and within the state itself.
Some countries—Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom or Brazil—are stable precisely because they are open. Commercial, intellectual and social interactions across borders render their cultures and economies ever more dynamic. Other states, such as North Korea, Iran or Cuba, remain stable only so long as they remain closed and isolated.
Now imagine a graph on which the vertical axis measures stability and the horizontal axis measures openness. States that appear as points higher on the graph are more stable, while those lower are less stable. Those further to the right on the graph are more open; those on the left, less so. Were you to map every possible combination of stability and openness that a given state could generate, those points would form a shape very much like the letter “J”.
This “J-Curve”, properly understood, can be an effective tool for the architects of foreign policy, because it reveals a great deal about how other states define their interests and develop governing strategies. The J-Curve is agnostic on questions of the relative virtues of democracy. There are plenty of states that are more stable as dictatorships than they would be if they were governed with the consent of the governed. The relationship between stability and openness also reveals that a democracy’s success depends not on happy accidents of history, but on social, cultural and economic circumstances within a country that do or do not favor its development.
Because the left side of the J-Curve is considerably steeper than the right, it means that whenever a closed society begins to open up and interact with a globalized world, the chances are much higher that such a state can more quickly and easily fall down the curve into instability than a state that is on the right side of the curve. The process of democratization can create instability especially in states where democracy is a recent import, where long-repressed demands for change are released and when previously disenfranchised players scramble for the first time for a share of the country’s political and economic spoils.
A state’s relative prosperity determines its baseline for stability. If North Korea suddenly struck oil, it would become more stable at every point along the curve, because it would have more resources with which to artificially reinforce stability at every given level of openness. If oil prices suddenly crashed to $20 per barrel, Saudi Arabia would become considerably less stable. But the basic relationship between stability and openness (the shape of the curve) remains the same whether the entire curve is rising or falling.
Given the steepness of the left side of the curve, a formerly closed state that has begun to implement some reforms can more quickly restore damaged stability than a state that has gone further down the reform road—in its attempt to reach the levels of openness and stability of right-hand states. It is faster and easier to restore stability by declaring martial law—closing the country—than it is to create an open, stable, functioning civil society and attract foreign investment. This is especially the case if large amounts of external support are not available to guarantee a baseline level of prosperity while changes are underway or—unlike in the case of a number of Central and East European states—there is no guarantee that the adoption of painful reforms will lead to guaranteed results.
Bremmer then tries to apply the J-Curve to current for policy quandries:
U.S. policies toward Iran and North Korea are failing for precisely the same reason that Bush Administration policy toward China shows more promise: The isolation of authoritarian states is self-defeating. If the aim is to undermine a dictatorship, one should open it to the outside world.
Is it realistic to expect the U.S. government to respond to Iran’s uranium enrichment and North Korea’s nuclear test by engaging these countries and by promoting investment in their economies? If enabling growth (and greater openness) in China makes good sense, why not pursue the same strategy in other politically repressive states?
The United States is going to face a number of challenges and disappointments over the next two years—Iran, Iraq, North Korea, China and Russia, among others. The first reaction of many U.S. politicians is to be confrontational. Easing tensions with rogue states and with countries perceived to be opposing U.S. policies will not win the president points with those who prefer a muscular strategy. But decisions need to be made on the basis of long-term U.S. interests, not short-term sound bites. The best reason to avoid self-congratulatory legislation that isolates rogue states to change their behavior is that we know this approach won’t work.
