A Realist in Foreign Affairs

This tribute to Owen Harries presents thirty-five of the 270-odd articles he published in journals of record including Quadrant, National Interest, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Foreign Affairs and New Republic. It also includes a chapter from Harries’s Boyer Lectures for 2003. Tom Switzer and Sue Windybank have selected his sharpest, wittiest and most durable pieces, cutting some for length and accessibility. The essays are bookended with a fine introduction by Michael Easson, one of the instigators of this book, and an absorbing interview with Harries by Windybank. These are fitting bookends: the interview exhibits the erudition and discernment Easson commends.

Harries wrote with a ready wit, a gift for the mot juste, and an epigrammatic style. This volume of essays shows the range of his engagements and samples the opinion leaders with whom he debated and collaborated: Nathan Glazer, Francis Fukuyama, Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Samuel Huntington, Irving and Bill Kristol, Jeane Kirkpatrick and more. The United States is where Harries had most impact and American foreign policy receives the largest number of chapters.

Harries was a Welshman who migrated to Australia in the 1950s to teach at the University of Sydney. He moved a decade later to the University of New South Wales, where he was probably best known for his articulate, if unpopular, defence of the Australian commitment to South Vietnam. That defence also included trenchant criticism of governments willing to send troops there but unable to mount a convincing case for doing so. Harries was a formidable opponent in debate. Even with the room against him, he out-performed his opponents.

Much of the argument against the Vietnam intervention was moral—a protest against war as such. Owen made his case as a realist in strategic and geopolitical terms. And he did it with the commanding technique outlined in the masterly first essay, “How to Win Arguments and Influence People”. With the election of the Fraser government he left academia to become a ministerial adviser, a decision untinged with regret: “the foolishness and cowardice of the American university scene had been faithfully copied in Australia”.  

In Canberra he chaired the ground-breaking inquiry into Australia and the Third World, and was principal author of its report. In 1982 he became Australian ambassador to UNESCO—and its fierce public critic. In the mid-1980s he moved to Washington and the founding editorship of a new foreign affairs magazine, the National Interest, where he espoused a realist approach against the rising tide of neoconservatism.

The essays chosen by the editors cover Harries’s views of politics, his reflections on Australian foreign policy, his responses to various aspects of American foreign relations, and consideration of foreign policy in a global context. The theme of realism in politics binds the selection together. Disarmingly, Harries did not believe realism was doctrinal: “to tell you the truth, I don’t think it is much of a coherent theory … But if it isn’t much of an intellectual position, it is an excellent disposition with which to approach foreign policy and international affairs.” Realists acknowledge the overriding priority of state survival, the centrality of self-interest in its calculations, and the need for states to use force prudently in pursuit of their interests. While humanitarian impulses are commendable, in the affairs of states they do not take priority over these other interests. Changing circumstances make consistency unmanageable and restraint desirable. Politics is not the attainment of some vision but “an endless process driven only by proximate and provisional objectives”. Realists prefer prudence to moral claims in politics, and recognise that good intentions can produce unintended harmful consequences. They attend to the interests and capabilities of states rather than the ambitions of the regimes that run them.

Realism of this kind was common ground with conservativism until the end of the Cold War led some conservatives to forsake realpolitik for an expansive American foreign policy. This was the neoconservative moment, and Harries was foremost among its critics. The abandonment of caution troubled Harries. He quotes Madeleine Albright’s remark to an astonished General Colin Powell: “What is the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?” Perhaps she was not joking.

Both conservatism and realism are defined as much by what they are not as by what they are. They are not utopian. Typically, utopians believe in the goodness of human nature; that conflicts arise from ignorance and misunderstanding rather than malice or self-interest; and that multilateral ties and mutual security can be built on shared values such as democracy. They give expression to these beliefs in a patchwork of international institutions, like the UN, which Harries dismisses with a realist quip: “The UN does not replace power politics, it merely disguises it.” He showed similar esteem for the EU, which he regarded as “an elite-driven thing that has been foisted upon Europe essentially by the political elites”.

Realists acknowledge that international conflicts arise from the pursuit of state interests and that conflict cannot be willed away despite the optimism of utopians. Harries quotes with approval the English journalist Frank Johnson who wrote, “In politics, Utopia is always an important country, always one of the Great Powers.”

Harries disagreed forcefully with neoconservative friends who viewed the collapse of the Soviet Union as an opportunity to advance democracy and American values. He counselled “prudence and restraint”, decrying “gung-ho” demands for American leadership that had no other goal than to show the world who was in charge. Harries considered the US “by historical standards a benevolent hegemon”, but one nevertheless determined to use its vast power “to create a world in its own image, with institutions and rules determined by Washington (though Washington sometimes insists on excluding itself from its own rules)”. He chided American exceptionalism and cautioned against unilateral action by the US in areas of conflict. The absurd claim that the United States was the world’s sole superpower led neoconservatives to discount the interests of other powers, and to treat democracy as an American export. These propositions were debatable until 9/11. A new external enemy had presented itself, and realists like Harries could only watch as the fiasco in Iraq unfolded with neoconservative support.

Against the non-realist analysts of international politics Harries argued that the Soviet Union threw off its repressive character not through the good will or statesmanship of Gorbachev, but because of Reagan’s increased defence spending, his placement of Pershing II missiles in Europe, his aid to Afghanistan and his Strategic Defence Initiative (“Star Wars”). The Soviets could not compete and the empire fell. Harries expressed no triumph. Instead, he warned of the dangers of an expansionist US foreign policy. He described President Clinton’s intervention in the Kosovo conflict as, “Heavy on Balkan history and light on serious analysis” where “bombs are serving as substitutes for thought”. He foresaw that Clinton’s marginalisation of Russia would affect relations with China and that China would become the new enemy. Yet he gave the Clinton administration backhanded praise for “indifference and inattentiveness” to foreign policy and for “the blundering mediocrity of his foreign policy team”. Clinton’s incompetence checked neoconservatism and returned America to a more cautious and restrained engagement in international affairs.

Harries was particularly critical of the eastward expansion of NATO. He warned that it would break an understanding not to take strategic and political advantage of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. That caution went unheeded. NATO expanded under Clinton. In possibly the most important essay in the book, “The Dangers of Expansive Realism”, Harries called the expansion “an unprecedented projection of American power into a sensitive region hitherto beyond its reach. It will constitute a veritable geopolitical revolution.” Russia felt cheated, and still does. America should have recognised that Russia’s interests continued to embrace its former territories. Harries argued that the West should have anticipated this, warning that Russia needed “careful handling, in the way that a wounded animal does”. Resentment has fed into its miscalculations in Ukraine. In 1992, Harries wrote:

The regional relationship between Ukraine and Russia is of great importance, but it is difficult to see how the United States could play a major role if the relationship were to deteriorate seriously. Good offices, yes—but beyond that intervention would be both dangerous and probably ineffectual.

Thirty years ago, Harries’s position on Ukraine was consistent with his opposition to American intervention in the Balkans. Needless to say, his warnings were directed to neoconservatives in the 1990s, not to Ukraine today.

For Harries, the danger in neoconservative characterisations of China as a threat was that they could become self-fulfilling. “If you insist on treating another country as an enemy, it is likely to become one.” That might be so, but a realist analysis of capability also suggests that China’s inevitable projection of power in Asia would threaten America’s allies. The threat is real, not a reaction to neoconservative taunts. Harries’s realism made him sceptical of China’s ability to fit into the international system because it had limited experience in co-operating with other states: “China has always thought of itself as the centre of power.” He warned the US against making unqualified commitments to Taiwan because that would allow Taipei to dictate America’s relations with China. He preferred instead “a calculated ambiguity”.

He also counselled against Australian involvement in any conflict over Taiwan. He did not believe detachment would affect relations with the US. “We should calmly look them in the eye and say, ‘This is your East Timor. Good luck, chaps. We’re solidly clapping from the side-lines.’” Harries’s affection for the US notwithstanding, he reminded Australia that, as a great power, America would place little value on loyalty when American interests were at stake. We should learn the salutary lessons of American disengagement from causes we supported in West Papua and East Timor. Yet the relationship is asymmetrical: America might not back our important interests, but we might not have the luxury of not supporting theirs.

In 2006 Harries and Tom Switzer wrote a prescient article on Australian-American relations. They pointed to the change in the relationship wrought by the emergence of China as a great power. For the US, China was a rival; for Australia, it presented as an opportunity. Australia’s unconditional loyalty towards the US could no longer be the default position, and this country would need to become more pragmatic and more discriminating in its response to American foreign policy. That advice remains sound. Australia had been somnolent for far too long, safe in the illusion of a “special relationship” with America. As Harries dryly observed, “Such relationships usually exist principally in the imagination of the weaker parties.” Robert Menzies is often accused of relying on this “special relationship”, but Harries cites him as a realist in foreign policy. He quotes an observation of Menzies that still rings true: “We have to face many dangers, and I am not at all sure that the greatest is not one we have suffered from frequently—which is to say ‘Let’s pretend’.”

Pretending is still with us. Harries took the view that deposing Saddam Hussein would cost many innocent lives and leave disarray that the US could not manage to the satisfaction of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds. A venture framed in neoconservative terms of “remaking the world in America’s image”, should have prompted Australia to “request … clarification, rather than [offer] eager and unqualified support”. Alas, it preferred to accept the American view. Iraq would probably have been an easier invitation to decline than a request to assist Taiwan.

Is there room in Harries’s realism for morality? The answer is a Hobbesian “Yes”. Realism does not repudiate morality in foreign relations but tries to establish the conditions under which it can be practised. States are artificial persons which cannot be held to the same moral standards as real persons, individuals. The best that might be hoped of states morally is the not very elevated virtue of decency. Harries adopts Weber’s contrast of the ethic of ultimate ends with the ethic of responsibility. The former requires adherence to an absolute standard of conduct evident whatever the circumstances; the latter entails a concern for consequences and, hence, the use of judgment. Individuals might practise the former but states cannot. Pursuing human rights, for example, is a worthy enterprise for individuals, but in political decisions human rights have to take their place in a hierarchy of interests. That is something that idealists find difficult to accept.

Reviewing Abba Eban’s Diplomacy for the Next Century, Harries remarked, “If I were asked to nominate a brief, readable introduction to what realism in foreign policy means, or should mean, this book would now join a very short list.” He praises Eban’s clear and elegant writing, his gift for the epigrammatic turn, his historical fluency, and his intellectual focus. Fittingly, Switzer and Windybank’s volume of Harries’s essays may also be added to that list for the very same reasons.

Prudence and Power: The Writings of Owen Harries
edited by Tom Switzer & Sue Windybank
Connor Court, 2022, 304 pages, $49.95

Damian Grace is, with Michael Jackson, the author of Machiavelliana: The Living Machiavelli in Modern Mythologies (2018). He reviewed James Franklin’s new book The Worth of Persons in the March issue.