Germany 2030 vs China 2025 – reasons, risks & rent-seeking (2020)

‘Organised capitalism’ and an ‘interventionist state’ were key elements of Imperial Germany’s rapid economic development after 1871 (Hentschel 1978). In combination with post-unification economic integration and French war reparation, this helped turn Germany into a successful ‘late developer’ (Gerschenkron 1962). Economic policy under the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) was primarily concerned with restoring stability in the wake of hyper-inflation and then again following the New York stock market crash and the onset of the world economic crisis. The years 1933-45 saw increasing state intervention and, especially after 1942, a full-on shift towards a centrally coordinated war economy (Toooze 2006).

The Federal Republic adopted the so-called social market economy model based ordo-liberal principles (whose intellectual progenitor was the Freiburg School), while the German Democratic Republic adopted a system of planned economy (in German: Zentralverwaltungswirtschaft!). The social market economy model was based on free market principles underpinned by macro-stability, a stable, predictable institutional framework (think: Bundesbank) and social welfare policies. Unlike many other countries in East and West, West Germany did not engage in economic planning and largely refrained from interventionist, industrial policies, with some notable exceptions (e.g. Airbus), or at least used it more sparingly than many other countries. Even its attempt at Keynesian demand management in the late sixties proved short-lived (Scharpf 1987, Katzenstein 1987).

Recently Germany has begun to shift towards a more activist industrial policy. Some analysts have voiced fear about the rise of economic nationalism (Zettelmeyer 2019). The shift towards a more activist economic policy, away from long-standing ordo-liberal principles, marks a notable change and need to be largely understood as a response to China’s economic emergence and in particular the challenge China’s state-capitalist model poses to advanced economies in general and Germany in particular.

The acquisition of German robotics makers Kuka by a Chinese conglomerate in 2017 seems to have been a watershed moment. Germany soon passed new legislation, significantly tightening rules on inward investment and foreign acquisitions. It also threw its support behind an EU-wide FDI screening mechanism and it considered setting up a state-backed fund to fight off foreign acquisition in sectors deemed strategically important. (The recent epidemic has given further impetus to state involvement in the economy through the acquisition of equity stakes, not to mention the socialisation of private-sector financial risk.) Most significantly, Germany has also adopted a comprehensive national industrial policy strategy called Nationale Industriestrategie 2030.

As part of its national industrial strategy, Berlin is also rethinking its approach to economic openness as far as foreign (non-EU) investment is concerned. Germany's rethink and  newfound fondness for industrial policy is to a large extent driven by China. German concerns range from the (alleged and actual) non-market behaviour and increasing acquisitiveness of Chinese companies to complaints about a lack of reciprocal market access. Ultimately the biggest concern is about German competitiveness in the face of a rapidly modernising China. Hitherto Germany has benefitted more from China’s rapid industrialization than all other major economies given China’s seemingly insatiable demand for capital goods.

With China gradually shifting into advanced economic sectors, parts of the German industrial base are set to face increasing competition. As part of a concerted national effort called Made in China 2025, the Chinese government is seen as relying on non-market instruments to build an advanced indigenous technological base through forced technology transfer, competition and market access policies, (sometimes) outright IPR theft and, of course, foreign acquisitions carried about by state-owned/ -supported companies. Given Germany’s considerable trade with China, Berlin is seeking to address this challenge through a mixture of tightening investment restrictions and industrial policy, rather than trade measures. (Moreover, trade policy falls under EU jurisdiction.) Concerns about the politicisation of international economic interdependence (Jaeger 2020) are at best a secondary concern at the moment, compared to the perceived threat to German technological leadership in key economic sectors. 

Some analysts have pointed out that China’s IPR record is improving (Lardy 2018, Huang 2019). But this will be of little consolation to the technological leader economies concerned about retaining their edge, not least because China's long-standing 'Going abroad' policy also allow China to acquire technology, not infrequently thanks to state support. It is certainly reasonable to expect China to become increasingly compliant with global IPR standards as it becomes a producer of net innovation instead of being a net consumer of it. Then again, having benefitted from it, China was to become a ‘responsible stakeholder’ in the international system (Ikenberry 2007). This does not seem to be panning out (CFR 2015, Brookings 2020)

It looks at least equally likely that China’s compliance with IPR rules will remain selective, especially given intensifying Sino-US security competition. And there is always the possibility that China will comply with IPR rules in sectors of lesser strategic significance, while flaunting the rules in more strategic areas. The recent tightening of inward investment rules in a number of advanced economies (Australia, EU, Japan, US), including Germany, and more vocal demands on China to reform its IPR , technology transfer, market access and SOE policies need to be seen in this light: concerns about a level playing field and, ultimately, concerns about increasing Chinese competition. It is of course true that ‘catch-up’ economies often engage in IPR theft, patent violations or at very least reverse engineering (Huang 2019). Politically, however, this does little to appease advanced economies or lessen their economic-political concerns.

The most technologically advanced economies all share similar concerns about the Chinese government's concerted efforts to develop emerging technologies, such as AI, robotics, big data, nano-technology etc. As part of Made in China 2025, Beijing is pursuing a broader, focused national industrial policy aimed at making China a 'leading manufacturing power by 2049'. Unlike Washington, Berlin is less concerned about the military potential of these technologies than about how they may affect its technological-economic position. It is one thing to “trade" low value-added sectors for access to a rapidly growing market for high value-added capital goods. It is another matter entirely to push for (or maintain) economic openness or stick to laissez-faire economic policies if it risks the erosion of one’s technological leadership position.

This is all the more of a concern to the extent these new technologies are seen, rightly or wrongly, as being characterised by winner-takes-all competition (Lee 2018). If this is in fact what they are, then the stand-off over foreign investment rules and national industrial policies is akin to a classic issue in strategic trade theory (Brander-Spencer model), where state support can help a national champion ‘defeat’ its competitor under conditions of a duopoly and subsequently appropriate significant rents. In international trade, the infant industry argument (Friedrich List, JS Mill) has a similar logic. Note however that the veracity of this argument in favor of state intervention critically depends on the assumption that these technologies are characterised by winner-take-all outcomes and that the laggards cannot reverse-engineer these technologies, or can only do so at great cost and with considerable difficulty.

Standard economic theory posits technological diffusion and economic efficiency, while political economists poinst to the inextricable link between 'power and plenty' (Viner 1948). Political-economy scholars see national economies as competing with other economies, economically and politically, and are less interested in and less concerned with allocational efficiency than economists. If international economic exchange is seen as though the prism of competition rather than efficiency maximisation, retaining technological leadership becomes important. And under condition of imperfect markets, rents will accrue to the 'winner'. If emerging technologies are characterised by winner-take-all competition and generate significant spill-over effects in the national economy and if government-led industrial policy makes it significantly more likely to master these technologies (Brookings 2020), then the advanced economies cannot sit by idly. Critics of industrial policy often point out that state-supported policies are not significantly more likely to lead to success than innovation that relies on market forces – at least if the comparison is between China and the US. It is also not clear whether the emerging technologies are truly winner-take-all technologies. The latter is difficult to evaluate. With respect to the former, there is historical experience.

Industrial policy remains surprisingly controversial among economists and political economists alike (Johnson 1982, Wade 1990, Woo-Cummings 1999, Chang 2002). While most scholars would agree that successful economic ‘catch up’ took place against the backdrop of state-supported development policies, it is also true that many attempts at state-led economic development ended in relative failure. Germany, Japan, Korea and, today, China were very successful as so-called ‘latecomers’ relying on state-led policies. Other cases were less successful, if perhaps not entirely unsuccessful (e.g. Brazil, Mexico, Turkey) depending on what one's benchmark for success is (Rodrik 2008). And the World Bank (1993) controversially attributed East Asia’s economic rise to liberal rather than state-led policies. While there are good theoretical arguments why government industrial policy can help foster economic growth and development (Rosenstein-Rodan 1943, Scitovsky 1954), the evidence does suggest that industrial policy needs to be deployed intelligently and cautiously if it is to be successful. Simply put, it is no panacea.

Historically, successful industrial policy has depended on (a) support of domestic producers in sophisticated industries, (b) export orientation and (c) pursuit of fierce composition with strict accountability (IMF 2019). Policy should focus on (relative to the level of development) advanced sectors rather than declining ones. Export-oriented industries promise higher returns per unit of government support. Incentives need to be well-designed, capture by rent-seeking must be steadfastly avoided, and the beneficiaries of government support must be held accountable. After all, industrial policy – more so many other types of economic policy – tends to provide significant incentives for rent-seeking (Tullock 1967). And it is always a fine line that divides ensuring the existence of a level playing field (fair competition, fair trade and so on) and offering efficiency-reducing rents to special interests.

The notion of a national (European) champion illustrates the potentially two-edged nature of industrial policy. On the one hand, economies of scale may be necessary to withstand extra-regional competition (e.g. Chinese train manufacturers) and preserve an indigenous economic base. On the other hand, a domestic quasi-monopoly may weigh on efficiency and weaken the incentives to increase productivity and innovate. Interestingly, European competition policy has been quite successful in efficiency terms, compared to the US (Philippon 2019). But this may also part of the reason why the US has more global players with sufficient scale, perhaps in part thanks to their unassailable domestic market position (Google, Apple, Facebook).

Rent-seeking interests represent a constant threat to a successful industrial policy. There is a ready political market for rents. Preserving jobs is not too difficult to sell to elected politicians and subsidies are perfectly well-suited for successful rent-seeking because they are typically highly targeted and specific (Olson 1964). There is a legitimate concern about preserving robust national economic capabilities in strategically important sectors (as the recent debate about 'just-in-case' versus 'just-in-time' supply management demonstrates). But there must also a genuine concern about industrial policies being undermined by political-electoral opportunism and rent-seeking interests. This is a difficult balance to be struck and policymakers would be well-advised to recognise that the successes of industrial policy are about as numerous as the failures. Nonetheless, if creating a level playing field remains elusive and/ or maintaining technological leadership is regarded as quasi-existential, an intelligently designed government policy that supports innovation and productivity in strategic economic sectors represents a (second-best) solution.

The strategic concerns underpinning Germany’s newfound fondness for national industrial policy are well-understood. The emergence of China not only as an economic competitor but as a large economy whose government has successfully put substantial resources behind comprehensive and long-term national development strategies in the past and is prepared to resort to non-market behaviour has advanced economies concerned - and especially those with a large and sophisticated industrial base. However, in order for industrial policy to be successful, it needs to be well-designed and impose strict accountability. The strategic reasoning behind industrial policy is defensible given the uncertainty related to the potential benefits and winner-take-all characteristics of emerging technologies and the way they might impact 'national competitiveness' (pace, Paul Krugman 1994), or (national) productivity. The conceptual design and practical implementation of industrial policy is tricky. Last not not least, it is worth remembering that industrial policies focused on 'catch up' economic development are easier to implement successfully than a national industrial strategy at the technological frontier. Both Berlin and Beijing would be well-advised to bear this in mind. Food for (further) thought.

Public goods, club goods & post-pandemic EU stability (2020)

Economists distinguish between different types of economic goods: public goods, common-pool resources, club goods and private goods. These goods vary along two dimensions: (1) rivalry in consumption and (2) excludability. A public good, for instance, is non-rivalrous in consumption and non-excludable. Air is often cited as a proto-typical public good. So is national defence. The nature of a good is not a given, but depends on the social, legal and economic conventions and circumstances. The commons in England were transformed from a common-pool resource into a private good through so-called enclosure (Polanyi 1944, Hardin 1968). It is rare to encounter goods in the real world in their ‘pure’ form. Rivalry in consumption and excludability typically come in degrees and so do the various types of economic goods. Few goods are unalterably non-excludable. Often the degree of a good’s publicness can be altered. Free trade policy can be transformed from a public good into a good more closely resembling a club or even a private good if selective protectionist measures are permissible (Gowa 1988). Nonetheless, the economic goods concept is heuristically useful.

Charles Kindleberger (1973) made use of the public goods concept to account for the stability of the liberal pre-1914 and post-1945 international economic regimes. In order to overcome collective action and cooperation problems, a hegemon needs to furnish public goods (e.g. market for distressed goods, lender-of-last resort, stable monetary relations). Kindleberger famously (but not uncontroversiallly) claimed that the breakdown of the interwar international economic regime was due to the United States’ unwillingness and Britain’s inability to exercise hegemonic leadership and provide the necessary international public goods and economic infrastructure. From this perspective, the United States became the provider-in-chief of global public goods after 1945. This is not the place to assess the empirical and conceptual validity of the Kindlebergerian variety of hegemonic stability theory (see Krasner 1976, Kindleberger 1981, Stein (1984), Snidal 1985, Keohane 1984, Eichengreen 1987; Krasner & Webb 1989; Gowa 1989; for a good summary Lake 1993) other than to note that different versions of hegemonic stability theory have different views as to whether the hegemon is exploited by or instead exploits the other states partaking in the ‘consumption’ of the international public goods.

Mancur Olson (1964) offered an explanation as to why public goods often fail to be provided even though their provision is everybody’s interest. The reason, Olson argued, is that public goods are characterised by non-excludability and this leads to free-riding. Free-riding tends to result in the public good not being provided. Moreover, individual actors will not to contribute to the provision of a public good if (1) the individual costs of doing so exceed the individual benefits and/ or (2) the individual contribution to the provision of the good is so small that it is not likely to have an impact on whether the good is provided or not (so-called “inconsequentiality problem”).  

The collective action problem is particularly relevant in the case of large groups. The larger the group, (1) the lower share of individual benefits, (2) the less likely it is that individual benefits exceed individual costs and (3) the greater the organisational costs of organising the provision of . The collective action problem can be overcome (1) by offering selective incentives to individual members or (2) by forcing the potential beneficiaries to contribute (coercion). By contrast, in small groups (1) individual contributions are not independent of the contribution by others and (2) individual benefits are likely to exceed individual costs. All other things equal, this makes smaller groups more likely to provide public goods. At risk of oversimplification, the characteristics of a public good offer incentives to free-ride, thus making the provision anything but a foregone conclusion. Another important implication of the logic of collective action and public goods provision is that small stakeholders tend to exploit large stakeholders.

Collective action tends to be characterised by the ‘exploitation of the great by the small’. The reasoning goes something like this. If the larger actors have an incentive to provide the public good because they derive a net benefit from it, they will provide it regardless of what the smaller actors will do. The smaller actors understand this and will tend to free-ride given that the public good is by definition non-excludable and non-rivalrous in consumption. Provided the good is truly and purely public, the larger actors cannot resort to excluding the smaller actors. They can however resort to coercion and force the smaller members to contribute to the total costs of the provision of the public goods. This, however, may not be economical if the coercion and enforcement costs reduce the net benefits accruing to the larger members by more than the additional costs recovered from coercion. (The costs of coercion will naturally increase with the size of the group.) Threatening not to provide the public good in the first place is not a credible option, either. In short, as long as the marginal benefits exceed the marginal the costs, the larger actors will tend to provide the public good. This is what the ‘exploitation of the large by the small’ is about. 

Olson & Zeckhauser (1966) argue that the same logic applies to groups like NATO. The logic of collective action can shed light on the degree of cost-sharing in the case of a security alliance. Members will be added until the marginal benefits equal the marginal costs of its members and members’ contributions then ought to equal their marginal utility. Moreover, to the extent that the US in the 1960s was by far the largest contributor to NATO, this would suggest that the US also derived the greatest utility from it. The logic of collective action however suggests that the smaller members tend to contribute disproportionately less than the larger members. This is what the ‘exploitation of the large by the small’ means. Admittedly, the tricky part, economically, is to calculate the costs and benefits. But it certainly it offers an interesting way to look national defence expenditure and collective security. That said, this issue appears in a slightly different light if one posits that NATO does not in fact provide a public good, but rather a club good. After all, collective security may be non-rivalrous in consumption, but non-members are by definition excluded from 'consuming' it (more on this below).

The post-WWII international economic order was based on the provision of club  goods rather than public goods. After all, Communist states were largely excluded from (Western) international economic institutions. Club goods are non-rivalrous in consumption (up to a point) but excludable (Buchanan 1965). Following this logic, the post-1947 GATT regime was certainly a club rather than a public good. After all, non-GATT members did not automatically benefit from the automatic trade privileges accorded to GATT members. Similarly, non-IMF members did not have access to an international lender-of-last resort function. It was admittedly more difficult to exclude non-IMF members from using the dollar, as the emergence of eurodollar markets in the seventies demonstrated. Excluding non-IMF members from using the dollar was in principle possible, if costly. Moreover, the IMF quota subscription were equivalent to the fixed membership fee and interests paid on IMF loans were the equivalent of a user fee in the parlance of club goods theory. Non-members certainly did not regard the IMF and GATT as providing public goods. To members the IMF provided a club good and if the principle of reciprocity is seen as a sort of membership fee or cost, so did GATT.

Lake (1993) argued that free trade is both rivalrous in consumption and excludable. Certainly free trade as a good is excludable, but it is less obvious that it is rivalrous in consumption. After all, a country’s ‘consumption’ of free trade does not diminish the ‘consumption’ of a country that has identical levels of commercial access. It is true that a country may ‘consume’ more market share. So distinction needs to be drawn between free trade and market share. This perhaps mirrors the distinction between free-traders and mercantilists as well as between neo-liberal institutionalists and neo-realists (Krasner 1976, Keohane 1984). Free trade is non-rivalrous in consumption. Market share is not. Free trade is in principle and in practice excludable.  

The EU common market and the euro area are club goods. The goods are excludable. Only members benefit from the free movement of goods, services, capital and labour. Non-members do not. The goods are also non-rivalrous in consumption. Again, a member may attract more capital or labour. But adding, for instance, another member would not diminish the degree of access to the common market. So consumption is non-rivalrous. The economic theory of the club suggests that, first, more members reduce the cost of running the club and, second, that increased membership will lead to reduced utility. But the latter only occurs if the goods are non-rivalrous in consumption only up to a certain point (e.g. swimming pool gets too crowded), which is an additional assumption club goods theory frequently makes. However, the common market does not suffer from the equivalent of 'congestion' as membership increases. In this sense, the EU common market is in fact a relatively ‘pure’ form of a club good. Consumption is non-rivalrous (one can’t consume more free trade than others) but the good is excludable (non-members do not benefit from the same access to the common market). What increased membership will do, however, is increase the incentives and opportunities for free-riding especially of the ‘small’ at the expense of the ‘great’ in terms of membership fees. Absent user fees, it is difficult to bring the marginal cost in line with the marginal utility of individual members. 

The EU’s largest member-state, Germany, is also the EU’s large single net contributor. In spite of being the largest net contributor to the EU budget, Germany has benefitted more from economic integration than any other EU member (in absolute terms) due to trade specialisation, economies of scale and agglomeration effects (Krugman 1991). The economic gains from free trade in goods and services and the free movement of capital and labour, though difficult to calculate, almost certainly exceed cumulative net financial transfers. (I promise I will try to do this calculation in a future comment. For now, just grant me this assumption.) And this is not taking into account the less quantifiable benefits of trade vulnerability mitigation and insulation from international diplomatic-economic pressure and demands (Jaeger 2020). Some economists argue that monetary union led to an excessive export of capital and this is in part responsible for Germany's low productivity growth. This is a separate argument I cannot address here, except to point out that economies comparable to Germany that are not in a monetary union have not done visibly better, productivity- and growth-wise, in the past two decades (e.g. Japan). The point is: Germany’s ‘disproportionate’ financial contribution to the EU budget looks like a case of the ‘great being exploited by the small’. It also suggests that the marginal economic-political benefits Germany derives from EU and euro area membership continue to exceed the marginal costs. In other words, economic efficiency gains outweigh financial contributions. This sounds about right, intuitively. But I admit that I owe the reader a detailed calculation.

The logic of collective action suggests that the smaller EU member-states are well-positioned to 'exploit' or free-ride in a way similar to how Germany free-rides on NATO (or the US). However, such free-riding will only work to the extent that the free-riding does not lead to marginal costs exceeding marginal benefits for the larger EU members. After all, the great are unlikely to help provide the good if they do not derive a net benefit from it. But as long as the marginal benefit of membership exceeds the marginal cost, the great are bound to shoulder a disproportionate burden. So Thucydides’ “the strong do as they please, the weak suffer as they must” does not seem to hold in a cooperative as opposed to a conflictual context. Smallness can give a state bargaining power disproportionate to its size – but only up to a point. This is of course an insight well-recognised in IR alliance theory. In fairness, Thucydides was well aware of it, too, as his explanation of the origin of the Peloponnesian War in the context of the broader alliance structure and specific dispute involving Corcyra, Epidamus, Corinth demonstrates.

The need for post-pandemic EU stability and the increased resources this will require is bound to lead the larger members to increase their economic-financial contributions relatively more than the smaller members - at least, this is what the logic of collective action would suggest. The recent Franco-German agreement on a EUR 500 bn rescue fund (effectively grants, as it stands) and the opposition to it by many of the smaller 'frugal' (northern and eastern) member-states suggest as much. While this might be interpreted as the traditional opposition of 'creditor' countries to transfers to 'debtor' countries, it does in fact demonstrate that the larger 'creditors' (France, Germany) are more prepared to transfer additional resources to the EU member-states most adversely affected by the pandemic, compared to the smaller ('frugal') 'creditor' countries. And the fact that Berlin's decision came hot on the heels of a ruling by the German constitutional court that is thought to cast doubt on the Bundesbank's participation in the ECB's pandemic-related quantitative easing programme suggests that the German government is keen to maintain the stability and integrity of the common market given the continued net benefits Germany derives from it. This makes sense in light of the Olsonian logic of collective action. Hitherto the 'exploitation of the great by the small' hypothesis is consistent with the 'data'. 

War, film & literature (2020)

War has been an integral part of human civilisation since its very beginning. The founding text of Western culture, Homer’s Ulysses, deals with war (and a great many other things). So do Herodotus’ Histories and Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. Another icon of Western culture, William Shakespeare, frequently dealt with war in his plays. The bard’s plays and especially his history plays remain some of the most intelligent and insightful explorations of war – certainly in the Western canon. Many Shakespeare plays take place against the backdrop of important military conflicts or military encounters such as the Battle of Actium (Anthony and Cleopatra), the Battle of Philippi (Julius Caesar), Agincourt (Henry V), the Battle of Bosworth (Richard III), which ended the war between the Lancastrians and the Yorkists, more commonly known as the War of the Roses. Inter-state war and civil strife also form the backdrop of much of Henry IV and Henry VI. As Ben Johnson observed: “Shakespeare is not of an era, but for all ages”. And so he is. Every generation discovers “its” Shakespeare. Just compare Lawrence Olivier’s patriotic 1944 film version of Henry V with Kenneth Branagh’s far more ambivalent post-Falklands 1989 cinematic rendering of the same text.

I was going to write about literature, cinema and war. But I quickly realised that I am not a literary or a film critic. So here is simply a list of idiosyncratic literary and cinematic work related to war that is worth being acquainted with.

Literary Work

War and Peace (Leo Tolstoy, 1865)

Stahlgewitter (Ernst Jünger, 1920)

The Good Soldier Schweik (Jaroslav Hašek, 1921)

Im Westen Nichts Neues (Erich Maria Remarque, 1929)

A Farewell to Arms (Ernest Hemmingway, 1929)

The Quiet American (Graham Greene, 1955)

Blechtrommel (Günther Grass, 1959)

Naked and the Dead (Normal Mailer, 1948)

Catch-22 (Joseph Heller, 1961)

Man in the High Castle (PKD, 1962)

Slaughterhouse Five (Kurt Vonnegut, 1969)

Gravity’s Rainbow (Tom Pynchon, 1973)

Adolf Hitler: My part in his downfall (Spike Milligan, 1971)

Dispatches (Michael Herr, 1977)

A Rumor of War (Philip Caputo, 1977)

The Things We Carried (Tim O’Brien, 1990)

Indignation (Philip Roth, 2008)

War (Sebastian Junger, 2010)

On War and Writing (Samuel Hynes, 2018)


Cinematic Work

Napoleon (Abel Gance, 1927)

La Grande Illusion (Jean Renoir, 1937)

To Be or Not to Be (Ernst Lubitsch, 1942)

Ivan the Terrible I (Sergei Eisenstein, 1947)

Steel Helmet (Samuel Fuller, 1951)

Paths of Glory (Stanley Kubrick, 1957)

Die Brücke (Bernhard Wicki, 1959)

Human Condition (Masaka Kobayashi, 1959-61)

Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean, 1962)

Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer, 1962)

Dr Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick, 1964)

317th Platoon (Pierre Schoendorfer, 1965)

Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966)

Dad’s Army (BBC, 1968-77)

MASH (Robert Altman, 1970)

Tora, Tora, Tora (Fleischer, Fukasaku & Masuda, 1970)

The Pity and the Sorrow (Marcel Ophuls, 1972)

Deer Hunter (Michael Cimino, 1978)

Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979)

Das Boot (Wolfgang Petersen, 1981)

Allô, Allô (BBC, 1982-92)

Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence (Oshima, 1983)

Come and See (Elem Klimov, 1985)

Full Metal Jacket (Stanley Kubrick, 1987)

Blackadder Goes Forth (Richard Curits & Ben Elton, 1989)

Land and Freedom (Ken Loach, 1995)

Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick, 1998)

Downfall (Oliver Hirschbeigel, 2004)

Inglorious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, 2009)

Hurtlocker (Kathryn Bigelow, 2009)

Restrepo (Tin Hetherington & Sebastian Junger, 2010)

Korengal (Sebastian Junger, 2014)

The Vietnam War (Ken Burns, 2017)

Dunkirk (Christopher Nolan, 2017)

Five Came Back (Laurent Bouzereau, 2017)

They shall not grow old (Peter Jackson, 2018)

Pathos, ethos, logos & famous foreign policy speeches (2020)

Much of mainstream IR theory is underpinned by 'material' (in a broad sense) concepts such as power, interest and rationality. While 'ideational' concepts like ideas, perception and beliefs occasionally feature in IR theories (or at least middle-range theories), 'softer' meaning- and Verstehen-related concepts generally get short shrift, at least as far grand theories are concerned. Hermeneutics, semiotics and linguistics typically don’t feature much in IR theory. This is in part a reflection of the dominance of positivism at the methodological level and the centrality of realism and neo-liberal institutionalism at the theoretical level (at least in the US). While other disciplines experienced a “linguistic turn”, mainstream IR theory remained largely wedded to traditional concepts such as power and interest. Thucydides would no doubt recognise this mode of analysis. Interestingly, Thucydides does mention “fear, honor and greed” as underpinning international politics. While fear (realism) and greed (economic gain) remain part and parcel of realism and neo-liberalim institutionalism, honor features only rarely in contemporary IR theory these days (O'Neill 2001), while social-constructivist approaches are the exception that prove the rule (Wendt 1999).

And yet symbols, images and languages are ubiquitous features of at the very least the practice of international politics – though this does not necessarily mean that they are explanatorily relevant. A French president and German chancellor holding hands at military cemetery; Japanese prime ministers visiting a shrine; poppies being worn in the UK to commemorate the Great War; the Genbaku Dome in Hiroshima and the Gedächtniskirche in Berlin; the Vietnam memorial in DC; the tomb of the unknown soldier in Paris; verbal apologies for past misdeeds; the good-and-evil rhetoric before sending young men and women into combat. Symbols, images and language can only function in the context of socially constructed, shared meaning, culture and social identity. Admittedly, some IR sub-disciplines like foreign policy analysis have paid some attention to such issues as perception, beliefs and meaning (Khong 1992), certainly more so than traditional grand theories have.

Foreign policy speeches often make extensive use of symbols, images and rhetorical devices. To the extent that speeches seek to communicate and to persuade, they appeal to emotions (pathos), values (ethos) and reason (logos). Symbols and images play a greater role in speeches appealing to ethos and pathos rather than in logos. That certainly is the case for speeches given on momentous and historically significant occasions as well as on occasions when public mobilization and rallying support take priority over information sharing.

The more memorable foreign policy speeches (not surprisingly) appeal to ethos and pathos - more so than to logos. Pericles' funeral oration (440 BC) primarily appeals to ethos. Queen Elizabeth I's speech at Tilbury (1588), in anticipation of the Spanish invasion, does so, too (with a little bit of pathos added in). Henry V's (fictionalised) St. Crispin's Day speech (1415) before the battle of Agincourt [thank you Shakespeare] appeals to ethos and pathos, while Otto von Bismarck's Blut und Eisen speech (1862) arguably inclines more to logos and pathos. Winston Churchill’s war-time speeches (Finest Hour, Fight on the Beaches and Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat [all 1940]) are a mixture of ethos and pathos and very little logos. (This is of course a very common feature of wartime speeches when mobilisation and support are the name of the game.) Churchill’s post-WWII Iron Curtain (1946) speech was more a mixture of ethos and logos. Last but not least, Jospeh Goebbel's Total War (1943) speech is one of the more extreme pathos-oriented speeches in the history of international politics, in addition to being one of the most infamous ones.

Momentous US foreign policy speeches also often tilt towards pathos and ethos. George Washington’s farewell address, warning the young United States of Foreign Entanglements (1796), appealed significantly to logos and ethos, while Woodrow Wilson’s idealist Make the World Safe for Democracy (1917) speech relied above all on ethos. FDR’s post-Pearl Day of Infamy (1941) address, at a time when the US was under attack, not surprisingly appealed to pathos and ethos (in that order), not logos. 

Eisenhower’s warning about the Military-Industrial Complex (1961) in his farewell address inclined towards logos. JFK’s uplifting inaugural Bear any Burden (1961) address and the equally uplifting Ich bin ein Berliner (1963) speech, by contrast, appealed primarily to ethos. More somber and questioning, John Kerry’s Last Man to Die for a Mistake (1971) testimony before Congress is measured and relies on logos (as befits congressional testimony). Under the presidency of Ronald Reagan, major foreign policy speeches relied on ethos and pathos, as befits an actor-turned-politician and a president seeking to reenergise a United States suffering from Vietnam War related trauma and self-doubt. Reagan’s Evil Empire (1983) and Tear Down this Wall (1987) speeches were effective performances in this sense. 

Rhetoric and language arguably became more measured again towards and especially after the end of the Cold War. Under the presidencies of George Bush Sr. and Bill Clinton, logos and ethos dominated major foreign policy speeches, less so pathos. Bush presided over the end of the Cold War and arguably resisted  rhetorical triumphalism. This changed again under George Bush Jr. when US confronted a renewed security threat in the form of post-9/11 terrorism. Not surprisingly, the Axis of Evil (2002) address sought to cast world politics in black-and-white terms (“You are with us or against us”). Perhaps because of the questionable logic underpinning the case for war against Iraq (and the other “rogue states”), the US decided to rely on pathos and ethos. Under Obama, things turned once again more measured. The present administration has not delivered any memorable foreign policy speeches, America First speeches at the UN general assembly excepted. This may be a reflection of a lack of a broader strategy as well as the fact that trade conflict does not lend itself easily to producing memorable foreign policy speeches.

These random comments and observations are not meant to amount to a theory. (It is quite possible that especially US presidential speeches are in part a reflection of a president’s personality and style as well as their circumstances and related objectives.) The observations are only meant to make the point that symbols, pathos, meaning and so on are ubiquitous international politics. The fact that they rarely feature in IR theories (again: foreign policy analysis, deterrence/ coercion excepted) may be due to their more limited explanatory relevance compared to factors such as power and interest. It may also be due to the fact that meaning-related terms are less readily operationalizable and quantifiable making it more difficult to incorporate them into broader theories. Food for thought …. and a topic for future research?